John Wilson – the managing legal director of BAL Lawyers and an accredited specialist in industrial relations and employment law – has penned an interesting article in Fairfax on the increasing spending on contractors by federal governments and agencies over recent years, which has come as the Australian Public Service (APS) has shrunk to its smallest in terms of staff numbers since 2006. Wilson warns that the rise of contracting is adding to employment insecurity because contractors take on more risk for less benefits than an APS employee performing essentially the same role:
Anecdotally, and from my experience over the past few years, it is not uncommon for APS positions to be replaced with contractors engaged to perform essentially the same role. In fact, not infrequently, the same APS employee whose position was given over to a contractor is then engaged as that contractor…
The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
