The Canberra Times is running an article today claiming that the taxpayer bill for federal public sector redundancies is likely to top $1 billion even before entitlements such as leave are paid:
Analysis of 760 retrenchments across a number of Commonwealth employers since the federal election show the average redundant public servant has been leaving the bureaucracy with $64,331 plus entitlements.
The figures reinforce a Canberra Times prediction in December which, using Treasury economic outlook data to analyse a smaller total of redundancies, said payouts could reach as high as $1 billion.
The federal government was now in the process of reducing the bureaucracy by 16,500 by mid-2018 and was yet to detail how much the total redundancy bill would cost…
One influence driving up redundancy bills was the Commission of Audit’s call to reduce the number of middle managers…
Let’s hope that the current attempt at downsizing the public service does not end up following what happened when the Howard Government was first elected in 1996 and began cutting spending and jobs across public sector agencies.
Back then, those public servants with the most experience (and the largest “packages” on offer) took voluntary redundancies, only to then be re-hired as consultants and contractors, and were effectively paid more to do the same job.
