There’s plenty of attention when manufacturing workers face the sack. Cameras follow blue-collar workers as they dejectedly leave the factory gates; politicians spend hundreds of millions propping up marginal industries (especially if they’re in marginal seats). But what about when those facing the sack are wearing suits and sitting at a computer?
A public service cull has swept the country from Brisbane to Hobart to Adelaide. A nationwide analysis by Crikey has found 38,000 job cuts have been announced at the federal and state level over the past few years, and a further 24,000 positions are on the line. Maybe more.
There’s been nothing like it since Max “the Axe” Moore-Wilton slashed the Commonwealth public service in 1996. We’re losing staff, we’re losing expertise, we’re losing the wise heads who advise governments, we’re losing the people who answer our phone calls and process our forms and payments.
So why aren’t we having a rigorous debate about it? These culls may be necessary, they may be smart. Governance expert Stephen Bartos suggests reasons for a leaner public service in our story today:
“There’s a demonstrable need for change. These [job cuts] aren’t always bad things … it’s not all negative.”
Yet so far, the debate — which has tended to be highly localised — has oscillated between knee-jerk outrage at any job cuts, and “public service bashing” from those who think bureaucrats don’t do much real work.
So let’s look at the numbers. Let’s talk to the experts. Let’s hear from public servants. Let’s have a nuanced debate about what these cuts will mean and whether the trade-off is worth it. As former WA premier Geoff Gallop told Crikey:
“We need a more sophisticated discussion; we’re not getting it. They’re just slashing, and I don’t think that’s a very sophisticated way to proceed.”
It has often struck me as a logical disconnect that people say two things
Fisrt ” I wish the govt would leave me alone so I can get on with my life/my business etc”
then as soon as there is a problem they say “Why doesn’t the Govt do something about…(insert problem).
Quite often I have heard these statement uttered in the same breath without a sense of irony.
Parliament passes more & more laws and life gets more & more complicated yet somehow the PS is expected to cope with less & less. It just aint going to happen.
Business has proved that they can’t be trusted they need to be regulated/watched. The costs of inadequate supervision are unsustainable ( HIH anyone?)
Sure there are inefficient govt depts/worers but don’t hold up business as an example. BHP can’t do anything but dog holes. Look what happened with the HBI? Banks. Check out the forex scandal & Westpacs computer systme cost blow out then there’s Telstra which is getting better but Optus isn’t
Small business ? Don’t make me laugh 30 years dealing with that secor has shown me that only about 20% of small business proprietors are competent. The rest are either going broke, in business by the skin of their teeth or by simple good luck
I’ve been working both sides of the street ( big business, small & Govt) and quite frankly the PS is at least as efficient as business not that that’s a high bar.
The point of this rant is that the coalition will want to outsource & cut the PS. It has never saved money, improved service or even met minimal needs. If you want to have your life run by Serco then that’s what Abbott & his cronies will deliver.
Then we will see what has been lost. Enormous talent, experience & integrity
Crikey must be the only media outlet in the country that is actually taking this seriously. To everyone else we are just ‘faceless bureaucrats’. I could write an essay on this topic but alas I am too busy at work to take the time to do so!
Pav is right. These discussions are always predicated on the unspoken assumption that getting rid of public service jobs must be good, because what did they do to us. Of course, immediately their local govt centre closes due to lack of staff, they will cry like a banshee.
Fact is that the PS is just as efficient/inefficient, as small, medium and large enterprises, in spite of the prejudices.
Fact is that when a government reduces staff numbers by the simple expedient of just cutting by a certain number, they are effectively outsourcing responsibility for the cuts to the dept head, usually in the form of a reduced budget.
Smarter, or should I say more daring, PS heads in the past have then announced the closure of a certain popular function, best if it is one that was championed by their current minister, to meet redundancy requirements. The Minister is then caught in a pincer move in which they then have to decide whether they defend the cuts or their departments.
If politicians had any gumption, any integrity at all, they would announce job cuts, they would announce what things, what services they are no longer going to provide, and cut all the jobs from those areas.
In that way they actually would take responsibility for their decisions.
And outsourcing has never achieved savings when compared with the service previously provided within the public sector. A sufficient number of studies, plus my 30 years experience, is yet to see an outsourcing project that provided better value for money that was already being provided inside the dept.
While for corporates there can be other reasons for outsourcing, those don’t apply in the public sector, except for the simple expedient of appearing to reduce overall staffing numbers.
Usually achieved by sacking lower salaried service providers while giving substantial pay rises and more positions at the top end.
I was hopeful that the loss of a few hundred jobs in the media might have led to some more compassion in the reporting of PS jobs lost, but not so it seems.
Oh well, they’re only public servants.
Excellent comment both pav and dogs.
I also have worked in all forms of enterprise, private,(Mining and construction) public(DSS) and self employed, and to be quite honest the most efficient organisation for which I ever worked was the department of social security before campbell newman’s mum jocelyn got her hands on it.
I’ll answer your question as to “why”:
1. You know the old saying “politicians come and politicians go but the public service just grows and grows”. Its a bit like the skit a friend of mine sent me many years ago about 8 rowers in the olympics. As the committee looked at improving the results of the rowers they systematically replaced rowers with firstly a coach, then later a motivational psychologist, then later again a time and motion person and so on. In the end there was 1 rower left. The conclusion is that there were 7 people who were essentially leaches and producing zilch whilst 1 person was actually doing the rowing and the analogy should not be wasted with the public service.
2. I can personally give an example of the above in my local government area. Gosford Council is an organisation which levies high rates and has a large bureaucracy which produces propaganda and feel good reports which most nobody ever bothers to read and whose solution to the waste of public funds is “we need more money”. I imagine that Gosford Council is not too different to public service around the nation, filled with people who invent work to justify their existence.
3. We hear about heads of departments who earn in the order of $800 000 pa. This is obscene and should never have been permitted to happen.
4. Malcolm Turnball in response to a question about politicians second salary increase in only a few months responded that the increase was determined by an Independent Remuneration Tribunal and alluded to the fact that heads of departments had the same tribunal. One might believe that company CEOs, who also state that their huge and unjustified salary increases are as a result of an Independent Remuneration Tribunal, use the same group of “independent” people. But who is paying these “independent” tribunals.
We are all being played for mugs and the fact that Australians say little gives legitimacy to rorts after rorts.
So Crikey….why is there no fuss being made? Answer: who cares about Australians who care little about other Australians and who have taken so much for so long. IT IS LONG OVERDUE and I for one hope that the ranks of the public service is halved so that money is used for a USEFUL purpose rather than confetti.