End of Financial Year - what is going on??

must have been a blip in my EOFY approach, Dammit! busier than ever now.

I take it tandu is a contractor with a huge set of blinkers.

Bags of work out there, just look on seek.com.au
If they tried to pull any BS “caps” then they’ll have to explain the empty desks and no work getting done as the contractors will just say “toodle-ooo” and wander off to Westpac in Sydney.
It’s the contractors that do all the work anyway. If left to the permanents the whole system would seize up faster that you could say “flex day” or “that’s not my responsibility”.

Pandy said :

U are bad salesman?

I certainly hope not!

I work in the wholesale industry, so my clients are resellers, not end users. if I see a downturn, it means that the resellers are suffering more…

Seems there’s cutback on this thread as well! only 8 comments!!!!

That’s a downfall in it’s self!

I had trouble getting a renewal, but my EL2 argued and won it for me. It was a business decision, not a rate problem.

The pimps I have been talking to say there are only 1/3rd the contract roles out there that there was this time last year.

My work’s as busy as ever.

Gahhhhhh.

My work is quiet too at the moment, been this way for a few weeks. Insurance companies indirectly provide us with work. There shouldn’t really be any reason for the downturn, people should still be making insurance claims and Canberra’s population is growing daily. We aren’t contractors to the PS. We are not reliant on or connected in any way to PS.

U are bad salesman?

Slow down? It certainly hasn’t here!

But a previous poster has extended the thread on contractors.

First off, I don’t know of any recent single document/circular/instruction saying ‘cut down contractors’.

But what I do know is hourly and per diem rates for IT contractors increased markedly over the past couple of years. There has to be a price point where ‘value for money’ provisions set out in Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines and Financial Management and Public Service Acts etc mean sometimes the public interest is better served by not doing a task, rather than paying exorbitant amounts for it.

A couple of years ago, my typical run-of-the-mill contracted project manager or AP cost about the same as an EL2 plus oncosts. Today they are 50% more. I have several business areas who have postponed or withdrawn projects simply because the funding (secured 1 or more budgets ago) is no longer enough. And more who are still proceeding, but with a reduced scope.

Our Political Masters are aware of this. 2% efficiency dividends and no rollovers are the immediate response. Please refer to the recent Gershon post for musings about what is to come. (For what it’s worth, I think most of the posters missed the point. The UK and Queensland experiences point to reducing competition between departments for the same resources to the same tasks. I think we’ll have a similar approach here.)

So next time you or your firm seek a $20-per-hour increase for a contract extension, think how a government may seek to reduce its overall expenditure. Your actions may lead to contractor rates being capped at those comensurate with APS-plus-oncosts.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I am leaving the APS at the end of August. And starting work as a higher-paid contractor.)