I cannot see the point of Online Opinion give space to these propaganda think tanks. Leave it to News Ltd and Fairfax; they have already swamped the market with them.

Nice article Julie. We might start by asking why we need a Department of the Environment and a Department of Climate Change. Surely, the climate is an environmental matter. Similarly, why have separate Departments for Human Services and Health and Ageing?

Talk to a public servant in any State government and the cost of duplication between State and Commonwealth programmes will become obvious. Many Commonwealth 'initiatives' replicate existing State programmes and do so without the flexibility necessary to merge the two into one. Frontline service providers are thereby driven mad by overlapping programmes with different reporting and accountability requirements, the more so because Commonwealth programmes are often short term, say three years, with the funding ending at the end of the third year. State governments are then criticised if they don't continue the funding for programmes they didn't want or need in the first place.

All this comes about because the Commonwealth increasingly uses its taxing powers to intervene in areas which are much better left to the States. Which party has the courage to do something about this situation? Not holding my breath on that one.

'Most economists agree that such microeconomic reforms were appropriate, enabling the more efficient private sector to innovatively deliver a range of additional services to customers at lower costs in real terms over time.'

Not a shred of reliable or independent evidence has ever been able to prove this. On the contrary, the rise of monopolistic capitalism has created huge, unwieldy , inefficient international corporations, whose capacity for innovation has been greatly compromised by their enslavement to the 'competition' (i.e. profit) factor. The larger these corportions become, swallowing up everything in their paths, the less they are able to meet the local needs of the international markets in which they operate. In addition, the corporate sector receives the greater bulk of real government welfare, in the form of tax breaks, incentives and funding cronyism.

Having succeeded in imposing their dominant global free trade ideology on international commerce, academia and politics, the neo-liberals of the West are now openly and brazenly gunning for the public sector. With thousands of think-tanks and governments directly or indirectly on their payroll, the bastards will almost certainly get their way. Welcome to the nineteenth century.

no good lecturing to a party addicted to spending and big Government. It will take another 12 years of Conservatives to wind back the waste. And as for the climate change department well!. Just wait until we employ many more to collect the carbon tax, many more to give it away and many more studies to fool the public into thinking its legitimate.

Runner. Your type of cost cutting will cause unemployment. There's plenty of fat in the system that needs a trimming. The hysteria of the carbon tax makes employment and fully paid for. Make up your mind which way you want us to go. Wind back Tony is in a corner, it may well become a box.

There is a very simple reform to the Public Service that would accomplish wonders. Traditionally, the status and salary of an official depend on the number of his subordinates. Change this by setting the base salary for an official based on the duties of his position, and then reduce it by a nominal amount for each subordinate. This would achieve a massive improvement in efficiency.

579

Sounds like you agree with the Greek and Italian socialist ideologies of the last 40 years. Happy with waste and then blaming everyone else for the fruit of idiotic ideology.

ah, more supposedly balanced stuff from the IPA. Heaven help us. They know all the answers.

The savings to be made from public service cuts are minuscule compared to the infrastructure savings which would be realised from cutting immigration. Another far more pertinent topic is the rising cost of infrastructure, but would the IPA's sponsors agree with this line of inquiry?

The author is scampering excitedly after a little mouse, oblivious to the elephant.

The trouble with cost cutting in the public service is the random nature. The public service is about providing services and value for money for the tax dollar.

It is not about efficiency dividends which usually end up creating inefficiencies with cuts to real services while the fat continues to grow unabated. Senior positions within the APS have grown along with senior executive salaries which have risen more than lower end salaries.

Why not work out which services the public wants and fund them accordingly. To some extent, decisions about services could be democratically determined. If it came down to services for the disabled, extra beds in a hospital, more police according to need, fixing a pot-hole or establishing a whole new Department of Climate Change, I know what I would choose.

pelican you write

'If it came down to services for the disabled, extra beds in a hospital, more police according to need, fixing a pot-hole or establishing a whole new Department of Climate Change, I know what I would choose.'

First time ever I think we have agreement. Miracles happen!

The Child Support Agency is a classic example of the growth of executive pork. In just 5 years it has increased in size by 1/3, while senior executive service positions have increased by over 50% in the same period.

People have been moved up the seniority ladder and others have come in to take their place on the more junior rungs of the SES. the head of the Agency is now a Deputy Departmental secretary, for example, while Matt Miller, the previous head, was SES band 1. The additional cost is many thousands of dollars per year for no additional responsibility or additional productivity.

At the same time, there has been a deliberate effort to hide the cost of the CSA within the DHS budget, by aggregating figures that used to be itemised and by simply not reporting to the same degree of detail generally.

There is a huge amount of money being spent to combine the services offered by the CSA, Centrelink and Medicare within a "one-stop shop" backed up by DHS's new computer systems. Does anybody want to hazard a guess as to how much money will be saved due to staff redundancy? My guess is that staff numbers will increase, despite the efficiency gains from operating a coordinated system.

As the author points out, this is because:

"the public sector unions have gradually displaced manufacturing unions as kingmakers within the wider trade union movement."

The only problem is, she used the wrong gender. Overwhelmingly, the APS is being staffed by women, many of whom are separated parents. There has been enormous public expenditure on training these women at uni, and the priovate sector has no jobs for people with qualifications they have acquired, so now an enormous expenditure is occurring to give them jobs.

Feminism has a great deal to answer for and it may yet manage to send us all broke. Except those lucky enough to work for the Government of course...

Oh yeah, one more thing. At the time the CSA has been growing faster than it ever has during its history, most parents arrange their affairs with no involvement from the CSA and over 40% of all CSA paying parents are unemployed, which is some 80% of all unemployed men.

One of the biggest problems with this empire-building and nest-feathering is that is has no relationship with the efficient delivery of services, or to workload.

The PIGS are showing us what happens when you pay people high wages to watch people do things that were going to happen anyway.

http://webofdebt.com/ See the many articles by Ellen Brown.The fundamental problem is the banking system counterfeiting our currencies.

the public service is working as hard as it can.
Yes,
to further their Super Annuations at everyone else's cost.

Antiseptic
While I disagree with the idea that feminism is to blame for everything wrong with the public service I would not be surprised if CSA staffing figures were rubbery.

Single and divorced women have to work that is a reality, if they were living off the government purse you would be having a rant about the costs (financial and otherwise) of single parenting. I will never understand why single mothers attract this sort of anti-women sentiments in a way that single fathers never do. But that is life I guess, one of the negatives of being a women but it is illogical and unfair in a society that pushes the idea of a fair go. Your gift of arguing a position is reduced by these rants.

As for figures, they are often rubbery where departments opt for outsourcing (casual labour) where figures are essentially inaccurate or misleading in terms of 'real' staffing levels. I can't comment on the CSA specifically as I don't know the history.

runner
Not a miracle or divine intervention, we have agreed on issues previous to this. But it is heartening to observe people who disagree on essentials do at times come together in some areas of debate. :)

Pelican, this link shows the trends in APS employment.

http://www.apsc.gov.au/stateoftheservice/0910/chapter9.html

"One of the consistent, long-term trends in the APS has been continuing growth of women’s representation. This year, that trend has reversed, albeit very slightly. The total number of women increased by 1.6%—from 93,600 to 95,052—while the number of men increased by 1.9%—from 68,237 to 69,544. Despite this, the APS remains a more feminised workforce; women still account for a majority of APS employees—57.4% of ongoing employment and 57.7% of total employment, down from 57.5% and 57.8% respectively last year.3 This was the first year that women’s proportional representation among ongoing employees had fallen since 1994–95 when the ACT Public Service and several repatriation hospitals (all of which had highly feminised workforces) moved out of coverage of the PS Act. Before that, the last time their proportional representation fell was in 1961."

and

"The increase in non-ongoing employment during 2009–10 was much greater for men than for women (22.2% growth compared with 16.5%)."

and

"There is still considerable variation between agencies in the proportional representation of men and women. Of agencies with more than 1,000 ongoing employees, Medicare (80.4%) had the highest proportion of women, followed by DHS (75.6%)."

DHS and Centrelink inform and enforce Government policies affecting people. given the lack of male representation within those organisations is it really surprising that we never hear anything about helping men coming from them?

As I said, feminism has a lot to answer for, and with Unions and the ALP now dominated by career feminists, it will take a serious effort from the Coalition to address the problems they are creating.

I hope they have the strength to do so.

Pelican, as you've not responded, I'll just add one further comment.

Single women have to work, but they do not have to only work in jobs that have no purpose other than to create female employment.

Moreover, we the taxpayer do not have to be spending enormous amounts of money creating higher-level jobs just so women can have higher-level jobs.

That report I referred to in the last post says:

"Figure 9.6 shows that women’s representation among promotions to all classification groups is higher than their representation; however, they are under-represented in engagements, particularly in the EL group. The number of promotions is much higher than the number of engagements for both EL and SES groups so, in the long-term, relatively higher promotion rates for women will have more impact on their representation in these classifications than will the lower engagement rates."

In other words, "we can't find good women performers to appoint, but we're able to find lots of mediocre performers to promote".

The effect of this is:

"Representation of women in both EL and SES classifications is higher for younger age groups—women account for 54.8% of ELs aged less than 40 years and 38.6% of SES aged less than 40 years."

In other words, the men at the top are getting older and the women are getting younger. What do you think will happen when that large group of older men retire? Will there be a sudden push for more men when women represent 70% of all SES positions?

Should there be? Why/why not?

The overriding reason that the ALP federal government is so committed to a balanced budget is to obviate the fact that it is 1989 since a federal ALP government has delivered a balanced budget.

Keating walked out leaving an accumulated national deficit of 86 billion (10 billion more than he admitted previous to the election) and it took Howard and Costello a decade to wipe the slate clean.

Gillard and Swan are terrified of facing another election without having delivered a surplus budget.
To face another election without delivering a surplus budget since 1989 would be a bridge too far for the ALP.