Oh Good. mhaze back to pretending I intentionally misrepresented him despite his clarification doing nothing to strengthen his position.

//Nowhere did I say that the rise in the APS caused the massive debt.//

Fair enough, mhaze. I didn't mean to suggest you were claiming it was the sole cause.

//The bloating of the APS is PART of that, and getting the bloating under control is PART of the solution.//

That's really the point I've been questioning. The figures you've cited show the APS has grown faster than population, but they don't tell us whether that growth reflects unnecessary administrative expansion or additional policy responsibilities and programs.

Without a breakdown of where the growth occurred, it's difficult to determine whether it represents "bloat" in the sense you're using the term.

Trumpster,

I wont criticise the public service, until it reaches a point where it is forced to employ YOU! There must be a limit! BTW, have you ever been in public employ?

BTW, How is your lying folk hero, the Mad Hatter in Washington, doing with his murderous illegal war in the Middle East? Well, its at least stopped everyone talking about the hanky-panky show of Donald and his best buddy Jeffo'. BTW, weren't you a Rolf Harris supporter on this forum? Tie me kangaroo down sport, if I'm wrong.

Hi John Daysh and mhaze,

"Do you have a breakdown of what's included in the 137 per 1000? For example, does that count teachers, nurses, police, and local government staff, or only administrative civil servants?"

Can these numbers be made better or worse by outsourcing?

I'm thinking about carers, for the disabled and elderly.
I'm not sure if they count, but you stated 'nurses' John, and if they're included then carers are in the same kind of ballpark.

I believe you were dismissed for incompetence, during the Whitlam years, and have hated the PS, Gough and the Labor party ever since
Paul1405,
You keep saying that & it's time you told us where you got this from. I was never in the Public Service during the Whitlam years & I don't hate the Labor Party. Simple reason is that there's no Labor Party & it's in fact the ALP that is letting the Nation down, not Labor.
Regarding the 95% of PS needing to be sacked is something you keep latching onto despite my several explanations to as recent as a couple of days ago, Bureaucrats are the major bulk of that not the average working PS. As for "facilitating' welfare & Pension payments, some of them also facilitating mismanagement as we have experienced during Robodebt.
Again, I'll make the point to you that Public Servants are not bureaucrats & to throw them into the same basket is grossly unfair to genuine PS doing their job !

AC,

That's a really good point. I hadn't even thought of that. And it complicates matters for mhaze immensely!

If a government delivers services directly through public institutions, those workers appear in the public sector employment numbers.

If the same services are delivered through private providers funded by government programs, the workers show up in private sector employment instead.

In both cases the services still exist and are still being funded by government, but the employment statistics look very different.

It's yet another reason why aggregate “public employees per 1000 people” figures can be tricky to interpret.

The beauty of it is that no matter what the data there shows, the crack will only widen for mhaze.

Its unnecessary to justify the public service, unless you believe like some far right ratbags here that private can do it better, which of course is a lie.

Trumpster,

Can you give the figures for like countries to Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. They didn't make your list, why is that? Could it be that they have a large public service, and a better quality of life for their citizens than the cherry picked mob you put up. And nothing to say about the bloated number of Coalition "private consultants" that Labor has got rid of, and saved billions! What about the scandal that was those consultants like PWC among others ripping of the taxpayer.

"Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) has been embroiled in a massive scandal, primarily centred on its Australian branch, involving the misuse of confidential government information for commercial gain. The scandal, which began to surface in early 2023, has resulted in significant fallout, including investigations, high-level resignations, and a major loss of government business."

USA 63 public servants per 1000 people. Including 20,000 ICE agents who shoot their own citizens in cold blood!