I believe New Zealanders also share the expression ‘a Clayton’s’ thing. As in the old advertising byline, “the drink you have, when you’re not having a drink”. Well, the Albanese government is trying to big-up their Clayton’s public service cuts – and fooling nobody. Except, of course, for the pampered mandarins of the public service class.
Katy Gallagher and Jim Chalmers have put the squeeze on the federal public service to avoid a budget blowout, asking departments and agencies to save as much as five per cent of their costs in a move that has sparked warnings of further public service job losses.
Ooh, as much as five per cent, eh? That won’t go even half-way to bringing the public service back to its pre-Albanese level. Let alone the staggering growth in public sector wages, which have increased by a whopping $80 billion since Labor came to power: an astonishing 28 per cent growth.
These clowns are trying to piss on our legs and tell us it’s raining.
“It’s an exercise in discipline,” [Gallagher] told ABC Canberra.
If that’s ‘discipline’, then a gentle scolding is capital punishment.
They’re even admitting that they’re not ‘cutting’ anything.
Asked about the reported five per cent figure, Senator Gallagher said it was a “re-prioritisation” rather than a “cut” but did not dispute the magnitude. Re-prioritisations balance out other new spending, rather than reducing funding in absolute terms.
But that still leaves agencies needing to find five per cent of their current activities to discontinue.
How about starting with the ‘gender affirmation leave’ or the recently announced eight days ‘wellbeing leave’? Or the long lunches that keep Canberra Civic’s staggering abundance of swanky cafes and bars humming?
Who am I kidding? This is a public service whose members were reduced to crying in the elevators because Kevin Rudd asked them to do overtime.
The finance minister confirmed a report in the Australian Financial Review that she had asked senior bureaucrats to search for “things we don’t need to continue doing”.
Which is… well, nearly everything.
Naturally, the trougher class are screeching the roof down.
Melissa Donnelly, national secretary of public sector union the CPSU, said the move was “extremely concerning”.
“Arbitrary budget cuts across the public service hurt public services and inevitably result in job losses.”
If only.
Labor will actually cut public service jobs some time after Satan breaks out the winter woollies.
At federal and state level, it’s always the same pattern: elect a Labor government, and the useless taxpayer-funded class explodes. In just five years of Labor government, Queensland’s trougher army grew by 30,000, outstripping the state’s population growth. In just one year, Victorian Labor burdened the debt-ridden state with an extra 13,000 leaners. The public service wage bill alone grew by $20 billion in just five years to 2024. In every Labor state, public service growth has outpaced population growth by an average 13 per cent. Victoria leads the ravening pack with a stupendous 60 per cent public sector growth in 15 years (while the state’s population grew by ‘just’ 29 per cent).
The reason why is simple: more public servants, more Labor voters. The public service know who looks after them to do less and less, for more and more money (public sector wages have soared, even as public sector productivity has plummeted). Correspondingly, public servants vote Labor in droves. Canberra voted harder for Labor at the last election than any other state or territory.
So don’t expect Labor to start sacking their most loyal voters.
