Protect the Public Servants = Protect Yourself??

Illegal immigrants don’t exactly rock up to the Immigration desk and ask for some forms do they?

Nobody advertises for jobs this close to the Budget.

Scary. I’ve been “offline” in another government, so didn’t hear any of that. I sure hope they’re not going to pour money into the 2nd tier of gov’t, teh amount of waste and mis-management I saw there makes the APS look like the lean, fiscally accountable machine that it generally is.

And I’m on a contract! Looks like I’d better plan for one of those “unplanned” holidays come October.

Ant. There have been very clear signals about the upcoming Budget in federal agencies in the last couple of months. You needed to be an optimist late last year to put up a “New Policy Proposal”. It wouldn’t have got past your Cabinet Minister. We know what is in store particularly with the recent massive boost in expenditure (via give aways). In terms of the federal public service, just as in other razor gang periods, there will be travel restrictions,recruitment freezes,non extension of contractors and some programs will be cut. Now is not the time to be in ICT sector, with the Gershon reforms being implemented (introducing cuts to ICT expenditure in federal agencies).

Every new government which takes office makes big noises about cutting the PS – goes down well back in the electorates, you see. A few thousand are culled in the first year or so then – when nobody is looking – numbers start picking up again.

I’m wondering what the APS knows that we don’t know. Last week’s CT jobs pages were very slim, the usual suspects had one or no ads, where normally they’d have a cluster of them. I haven’t seen today’s effort yet, but suspect it’ll be similar. Very slim pickings indeed. Budget clue perhaps?

I well remember the furphies McMullan and Lundy put out circa 1996-7 about Howard government public service sackings. The plain fact was agencies offered packages to public servants to leave (and they were very generous ones by current standards) and there was a stampede to get them. So what that agencies were trimmed. There was a reason why the first Howard/Costello Budget was tough (Budget black hole). In my agency there was a near riot when the CPSU tried to stop the process. The CPSU didn’t know what to do as members wanted to leave in droves. The aforementioned Labor hacks described this process as “sackings”. That was absolutely inaccurate. I also remember many public servants in my agency saying they couldn’t work for Howard and then traipsed back in 2-3 years later, sometimes to their old jobs, thanks to their Labor mates in the agency. Real hippocrites. They were regular contributors to the C Times anti Howard letter writers. What are the Labor pollies in this town saying now? Lundy’s defence of the 2008 announcement to cut back on ABS staff was pathetic. No AWAs will eventually mean pay cuts for EL2s and EL1s. Watch now as real wages fall across the economy and in the Australian Public Service in particular. Hawke and Keating played the public service for suckers during the 1980s (real wages fell during the lead up to the second tier wages system and its aftermath). History repeats.

Awesome!

No wonder they’re weezie

Perhaps one of the excess staff could put a full stop somewhere in that crazy sentence.