The purpose of the public service is to produce things (mainly services). Hopefully these products are valued (by the people of Australia) and are produced efficiently. Now we are pretty sure that the public service produces outputs that are not valued, and often inefficiently. We also know that the Australian public service has grown by about 10 000 to 260 000 under the Rudd and Gillard governments.
But it seems that Wayne Swan wants to make the Australian public service even less efficient. He promises to reduce the outputs of the public service (after all, isn’t that what savings measures are about?), while keeping the same number of public servants. So output per public servant will decline.
Again, we may not value all of the outputs of the public service, which are often inefficiently produced. But surely it must be a first for government to publicly admit that it wants the public service to be less efficient? Shielding public servants from savage budget cuts just protects the insiders (the public servants) at the expense of the outsiders (the public). After all, the same quantity of budget savings could be achieved with less impact on the general citizen if public service number fell in line with overall expenditure (or perhaps by a greater amount, since we should demand increased efficiency, not less).
UPDATE
120925 WONG GRAY RELEASE – MAKING THE PUBLIC SERVICE MORE EFFICIENT
So the Parliamentary departments have been excluded from the so-called savings measures:
It also does not apply to the Departments of the Senate or the House of Representatives, reflecting the importance of the chamber departments in the functioning of the Federal Parliament.
Not only is there a lot of fat in the parliamentary departments, but this says that serving the Federal Parliament is more important than serving the people of Australia. No wonder people think politicians are out of touch. Can’t we get savings in Peter Slipper’s office?
It’s a perfectly valid argument Samuel except for one flaw – it assumes that Swan is telling the truth. I suspect that hearing Swan say this will have wiser heads in the public service dusting off their resumes as it pretty much guarantees a massive round of redundancies coming up.
The revision of the year end accounts came out and again Treasury was out by $20 Billion. It was not covered due to the Stenographers playing ensuring the news got buried.
That said, Labor will not be able to deliver a surplus so it must go to an election before the news gets out.
View Swan’s words from the following framework:
1. He is lying to the morons in the Federal & State public servants to secure Labor’s base in the heavily unionised public sector.
2. He is trying to reinforce the idea an Abbott government will replicate what the Newman government did and cut the APS to drive up the vote of the base of Labor that values job security over productivity.
Once the results of the 2012/13 year is known and it is clear the that the unsustainable levels of government employment can not go on the lie will fall apart.
We will have an election before May next year.
If he achieves this outcome then he truly is a genius.
Why so Rabz? Is that sarcasm? (i.e. implying they are already at their least productive?)
A growth of only 4% in 5 years seems low. Considering how much state public service numbers grew in QLD and NSW, surely the same thing must have been happening in Canberra?
Where are they hiding?
Interesting piece Samual J, somehow it just seems to not match up with what other sources have said………
A spokesman for the Treasurer later clarified he was not suggesting there would be growth this year, with a staff reduction of 3000 already budgeted before any further cuts, but rather that the public sector has grown by an average of 0.8 per cent a year over the five years Labor has been in office.
Is that an example of promoting inefficiency?
Senator Wong said that in meeting demands for savings, departments had been instructed to do everything possible to avoid forced redundancies. “We’ve taken an approach – and we have had to make difficult decisions – but we’ve taken an approach which is very clearly focused on efficiencies and trying to prioritise non-staffing savings,” she said.
OR perhaps Senator Wong can support your contentions?
Yes…
‘not suggesting there would be growth this year’ are the 3,000 actually cuts or are they the result of simply not employing more?
‘trying to prioritise non-staffing savings’ Xevram
perhaps you could ask Wong to give some examples? If you cut the programs and keep thje people what are they there for?
Um dickhead. The Treasurer is a lying scoundrel. That is entirely the point Mavrex, it is entirely the point.
The purpose of the public service is not to produce things, well it hasnt been since pre Hawke days anyway. Its purpose is to employ and empower the great majority of the professional Left, and huge numbers of unskilled rent seekers.
I am truly amazed at the ability of Australia to carry this unproductive dead weight, pay all the mad taxes, bribes and pensions, and still have enough left over to feed the kids.
Well that was a good tactic to get cat members shouting at clouds.
It wold be a Huge Saving to the Taxpayer. If
1. All but 10per cent of local government office people were sacked.
2.all but 10per cent of state government office people were sacked.
3.all byt 10per cent of federal govebnment officeeople were sacked.
4. All local government paid councillors,state government polliesand senators were sacked.
5. A Peoples Assembly of non political citizens were elected for 5 years and then fobidden to serve again .
6. Voting was not compulsory with no preferences.
7.all government actions subject to Referenda before implementation.
8. The president chosen by the Assembly for the term of the parliament.
9.no super or perks when you finish your term.
10.the country divided into Provinces with unpaid elected reps to Provincial Council.
That woul get rid of the power hungry elitist pollywankers?
In prefer allowing towns to operate at whatever level of Federation they prefer, with Parliament chosen by sortition and approval voting, and laws subject to CIR.
One thing that has just occurred to me is that politically, it is more likely for people outside of Canberra to feel more sympathy for state public servants. After all, state public servants are much more likely to be ‘visible’ front line workers, such as nurses, doctors, teachers, police, firefighters, etc. These are, to some extent, seen as noble occupations by a significant portion of the community. Also, the case can be made (correctly or not) by the state public sector unions that bureaucrats in capital city and regional head offices provide support to the front line workers. The federal public service is an entirely different beast. The federal government does not really employ any front line workers as such, unless you include customs officers, federal police and the like. It is entirely possible, and in my view likely, for the public to sympathise with state public servants losing their jobs and yet welcome cuts to federal public service numbers. As a federal public servant, I know just how little regard there is for people in my line of work.
Politically, I think the federal ALP has just shot themselves in the foot. Good. Keep shooting Wayne, you’ve still got three toes left…
Skute,
The definition of “frontline wukka” has been extended somewhat – that is, to include pretty well every public servant.
Quite frankly, given their absolutely appalling performance, would we really miss a bunch of sacked teachers and cops, not to mention social wukkas?
In many instances,public service growth is a result of misuse of the service by politicians and their advisors.Any significant improvement in public services,therefore, depends on a considerably better performance from our politicians.
It would be easier politically to cut 30% of the federal budget than to cut 10% at the state budget level.
Skute, Swan was talking to all those state employees across the nation including the railway workers, nurses, teachers and police.
As much as we despise him, we should not ignore the fact he knows how to play off people’s fears and feeds their envy.
The question is, if Labor is not going to an election, why play all the tricks now? You would think they’d play them at election time.
The economy will get worse due to China is slowing down and their card tricks to hide the economic disater will fall apart soon.
All I’m saying Rabz, is that the average disinterested punter who is compelled to vote, is less likely to care about pointy headed policy wonks in Canberra than state public servants who are much more engaged in the business of service delivery. Whether those state services are any good is another matter. If my contention is true, then Swan, Shorten, et al. have just f*cked up big time…AGAIN.
“If you cut the programs and keep thje people what are they there for?”
To ensure they keep voting for Labor. Couldn’t you figure that our or was that my cue to give the answer?;)
Two dogs quiet so.
If there was a constitutional amendment that disqualified from voting anyone receiving funds from the Government prior to the next election.
The reason why the public service is so large is that the clients of most public servants are other public servants. The reason why there is so much growth is that senior managers, particularly in corporate services, are geniuses in ‘make work’.
It’s certainly true that there’s plenty of fat in the APS (hint: 1,000 in the Dept of Climate Change and thousands of seat warmers in Defence). But, when I was there all Departments had to produce annual reports – in the form of massive questionnaires covering every aspect of activity – on things like Disability Discrimination Policy, Indigenous Workforce Targets, Occupational Health and Safety (which included government policies on exercise and smoking), cultural and gender sensitivity awareness and training, workplace bullying – the list goes on. This crap consumed thousands of hours in each Department.
Why? Because Ministers asked for it, like toddlers who see something they like and want it right now. And once it was there, none of their successors had the guts to get rid of it because someone in Fairfax or the ABC would jump on them for being insensitive and uncaring.
It was all justified in the name of ‘joined up government’ and ‘getting rid of silos’ and ‘a whole of government approach’. What it meant was a couple of press releases for a Minister and years of suffering for the worker bees – of course, those on top of each ‘whole of government objective’ were sitting pretty.
Getting rid of that crap, and the people who run it, would save 10% of costs without any perceptible change in APS outputs.