The Canberra Times is reporting today that the redundancy bill for Australia’s federal public servants blew-out to $580 million in 2013-2014 – more than double the forecast $273 million in the May Budget.
It’s not all bad, however, with public service wage costs falling by more than $700 million from the May Budget’s forecast:
The Final Budget Outcome reveals the Commonwealth’s “wages and salaries” bill for 2013-2014 was $18.8 billion against a prediction in May of $19.5 billion, probably reflecting several years of efficiency dividends, redundancies and other cuts…
Treasurer Joe Hockey said the blow-out in redundancies was the result of the previous Labor government forcing job losses on the public service without putting money aside to pay for redundancy packages…
[But] Labor’s employment spokesman Brendan O’Connor described the bill for golden handshakes as “beyond the pale”.
“It’s no secret the Coalition is obsessed with slashing government services, but this is beyond the pale,” Mr O’Connor said. “The Coalition’s enthusiasm to sack 16,500 public sector workers is not only damaging service delivery, it’s also blowing the budget.”
The grand irony from the Howard experience was that many of the contractors were the same former public servants who received generous redundancy payouts and then were paid much more to do the same job.
