Many of them should have been sacked for deporting and locking up Australians, not reading cables, fitting up "terror" suspects and sundry other crimes.

This hysteria based on one statement by Rudd is an absurd debate and not worth the time that has been wasted on it.

So many of those public servants have done nothing for so long that they should suck it up or resign.

Marilyn,

So you are happy to condemn hundreds of thousands of public servants for the actions of a few. A few that were highly politicised under the last government. Your bias is showing.

If you were to inflict this biased judgement on blue collar workers you would be shouted down in the streets.

Public servants are sucking it in and getting on with it but it doesn't mean that it is fair nor a desirable benchmark for other Australian workers. Or is work/life balance only relevant for a select group of workers of your choosing.

Kevin Rudd is thrashing around like a man possessed.He asks for reports and takes weeks to read them.How can one man assimilate so much information?

If he,after yrs of being in the PS and Govt cannot hone in the central issues,then he should not be PM.This man is all image.He is too obsessed just preening it,rather than tackling the important issues.He leaves Peter Garrett to explain why they will not back solar innovation here.Total hypocracy!Sign Kyoto but do not upset the coal industry.

Marilyn, generally I support the direction - if not always the vitriol - of your opinions.

However, in this case I think you're way off the mark. Do you actually know any public servants (I mean, other than your combatants)?

I'm not one, but over the years I've known and dealt with more than a few. They vary greatly.

Whatever the case, neither they nor any other Australian workers should be forced to work the utterly insane hours that have latterly become the norm. Surely you'd agree with that?

It has amazed me for years that those professing to be the most intellectual and clever nation not to mention richest nations on earth havent been able to figure out how to have a four to five hour working day for everyone. Even if they have one peron working four hours of a morning and one person working four hours of and afternoon to keep the shops and buisnesses open for eight to nine hours daily.

If all workers were content to only receive the wages associated with this then the market would have to adjust back down to a level where workers could spend lower incomes. As you can see when households have two incomes the market just adjusts upwards to eventually swallow the extra money earned.

I think maybe some at the top like the idea of having two big incomes to take off the workers.

Not so clever, clever country.

Shhhhh. Dont give away the ultimate point of the game, else, they'll be too much competition for leisure space and not enoigh people to do all the work that creates that space in the first place.

A buddhist monk who lives on alms alone, requires the toil of those who toil, so that he may be free of it all.

Dont ever forget, that its the hard working souls like rudd, who are thoroughly committed to themselves thru the mechanism of society, that create the leisurely spaces one moves thru.

Its a bit like jumping the queue when getting onto a freeway entrance. The fact that the majority stay in line, creates the opportunity for the queue jumpers.

If everyone jumped the queue, it would be chaos, a place where leisurely sloth just cannot exost.

Thanks rudd. Keep up the 'work' old boy.

ps. the likes of rudd, have in fact never really done a days 'work' in their life. As a former pen pusher, l can attest to the fact that, if l can go to work in $1000 worth of clothing, then l aint working.