7 August 2009

Snouts in the trough as ACT staffers cash in

| johnboy
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Oh to be a staffer in the ACT Government. Aside from scheming for their own political ambitions and fielding daily calls from eccentrics it seems they been doing a healthy trade in paying each other out on entitlements.

The Auditor-General has announced the release of her report into the “Administration of employment issues for staff of Members of the Legislative Assembly”.

The first two points from her key findings:

    • All MLAs including Ministers are the employers, but they or their nominated supervisors have not always supervised staff compliance with legal and procedural requirements. With compliance not effectively monitored, breaches of employment conditions may be neither detected nor remedied.

    • At the end of the 6th Assembly, 35 staff were paid termination payments totalling $469 706. The justification for termination payments to MLAs’ staff at the end of each Assembly needs review and reconsideration. Indeed, the Collective Agreement appeared to prevent termination payments to employees with a fixed employment term when the fixed period has expired.

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The money we get back from this can pay Godwin’s torch relay bill

Why exactly are political staffers being paid by the Canberra tax payer? If they do a job that benefits the ACT then they can do the same job for whomever wins. If they are doing a job that doesn’t benefit the ACT then they shouldn’t have jobs in the first place.

The payouts to former Howard Gov staffers were huge – totalled many millions….

Yep this is a rort – they are paid well and if they are stupid enough to go into that business – they shouldn’t be rewarded if their boss is hopeless.

Woody Mann-Caruso2:11 pm 07 Aug 09

You know, if somebody cut the Auditor-General’s funding it’d stop her getting her nice clean nose stuck in our lovely grotty trough. Oh, wait…

No suprise here is it, the rorts are well orchestrated at all levels of Government.

I’m with LG here, their contract should be fixed for the term from election to election.

I’m not convinced MLA (political) staffers should get any form of termination payment. Their contract should run from time of employment until the next election is called. If their MLA loses, so do they. Its not as if there aren’t other party hacks that’ll fill the void.

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