The people of Geelong may be counting their blessings. As “rust-belt” industries collapse all around the town, the good news is that 250 bureaucrats are coming to town. From The Age:
Up to 250 jobs are set to be shifted from Canberra in a move that could bolster the struggling government of Victoria’s Liberal premier Denis Napthine and has been labelled as pork barrelling.
The jobs will be shifted from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which has most of its workforce based in the ACT and according to one union already had 350 staff made redundant.
The new “ABS centre of excellence” for survey functions in Geelong to be opened by 2016 was another example of public service jobs being shifted out of Canberra into Coalition seats, but this time came within a month of a state election.
Already 300 Australian Tax Office jobs and another 300 positions from so far unnamed parts of the Commonwealth bureaucracy will be sent to the NSW Central Coast.
Coalition politicians in Tasmania and northern Australia are calling for public service jobs to be sent their way. At the same time, 6500 public service jobs are to be cut from the national capital’s economy by 2017.
…Fraser Labor MP Andrew Leigh said “apparently there’s jobs and funding to spare when one of their state Liberal mates needs a quick election goodie”.
“The Abbott government needs to realise the public service is not a pork barrel that it can dip into whenever the state Liberals are behind in the polls,” Dr Leigh said.
It will take more than that to save Geelong with cars, aluminium, oil and fertilizers all headed for the scrap heap. With the mining bust about to enter historic proportions and the Australian dollar set to plunge to hitherto undreamed of lows, at least the 250 new bureaucrats of Geelong will soon be able to buy a Korean built Ford for more than in cost to produce it here.
