A Schultz dynasty builds in Parliament. NSW south coast political watchers are telling us to keep an eye on Grant Schultz, who will run for Liberal Party preselection in the seat of Gilmore. The ex-copper is a lock to take the seat, we’re told. Schultz, of course, would join his dad Alby in Parliament (expected to be cleared for another run at neighbouring Hume in a May 12 preselection meeting) in something of a historic father/son bloc. Let us know, political historians: would it be the first time an MP had an offspring in parliament?

Razor gangs slice through departments. We shouldn’t be surprised by the savage staff cuts at the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, as we reported on Friday. “Cuts equivalent to about 10% of an agency’s ALS (average staffing levels) now seem to be the proposed approach for the departments of Health and Ageing, Education, Treasury and the Australian Bureau of Statistics,” according to one Canberra insider. “The question for department heads is what will they do when/if staff attrition and voluntary redundancies don’t raise sufficient ‘dividends’.”

And the loser is … find out later. Speaking of bonings: on Friday we mentioned one of the big four banks was running a reality TV-style redundancy system. One tipster was reminded of how they used to fire people at AMP in the early 1990s: “The department manager would call a staff meeting and tell them how many of them were to going to be made redundant and that all staff were to return to their desks and wait for the call.” Brutal.