It seems the long awaited retrenchment of public sector jobs has failed to come to fruition, with Federal Government agencies replacing lost staff with temporary contracts. From the Canberra Times:
Private recruitment firms are reaping tens of millions of dollars from the federal government’s public service cuts, supplying thousands of temporary bureaucrats, despite the hiring freeze.
The public service’s workplace authority admits it is powerless to stop the bonanza with the rules of the freeze leaving departmental bosses free to dip into their budgets and pay the private sector for contract labour to fill growing gaps in the workforce…
The freeze was imposed in October as part of the Coalition government’s public sector cost-cutting agenda but hiring activity has continued in the bureaucracy despite the government’s intentions.
The Canberra Times revealed less than four weeks after the freeze began that departments were still hiring consultants and contractors, some of them charging thousands of dollars for each day’s work.
There are obvious parallels with the Howard Government, where upon its election in March 1996, it began cutting spending and jobs across public sector agencies, only to then hire and army of consultants and contractors.
And the grand irony is that many of the contractors are the same former public servants who would have received generous redundancy payouts and are now being paid much more to do the same job (with a nice kicker also going to the recruitment firm).
Nice work if you can get it. Not so nice for taxpayers, though.
