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The Forum > General Discussion > Number of Public servants in Australia.

Number of Public servants in Australia.

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Found this article on the pay rises for public servants it also included the number of public servants in Australia in a country of 25 million people this is a recipe for disaster.

As of June 2018, Australia was home to 1.987 million public sector employees, of which 240,700 worked for the Commonwealth government.

State governments employed 1.559 million of them with another 187,600 in local government.

In 2017-18, the total cash wages and salaries for the public sector added up to $158.6 billion.

Public administration and safety had the highest wages bill of $51.6 billion in 2017/18.

Those figure probably would not include the thousands that are employed on a temporary basis to replace people sick or on maternity leave.

It would also not count the many that the Government use as advisors etc.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6379253/Public-servants-enjoy-salary-increases-four-cent-double-rate-inflation.html
Posted by Philip S, Monday, 12 November 2018 11:53:46 PM
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Why do you think that's a recipe for disaster?
Posted by Aidan, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 9:21:17 AM
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Please know that includes local government, councils and ambo,police, road workers rail,some air port workers
It to includes school teachers, some health workers, and a host of others
every day services we use every day and demand such as boarder force,
the sky is not falling the figures are not bad in the end
Posted by Belly, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 10:18:35 AM
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why do you think we have so many Labour/Green voters?
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 11:05:01 AM
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Aidan - If you can't see why for a country of 25 million economically is not good nothing will change your mind.

Belly - Thank you, I never would have known that unless I read the 3rd, 5th and 6th line above.
Posted by Philip S, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 11:06:13 AM
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Philip S,
Evidence would change my mind. But you appear to be baulking at the numbers despite the absence of evidence there's a problem at all, let alone a recipe for disaster.
Posted by Aidan, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 11:47:09 AM
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I have witnessed the Public Service in action first hand with many Departments & let me tell you Philip S is on the money.
Only the many public servants of no relevance will dispute that.
Of course we need a Public Service but do we need bureaucrats on huge salaries who contract their duties to outsiders at huge expense ?
Posted by individual, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 12:33:53 PM
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Someone asked recently "how many people are employed on global warming
committees, boards, in government, local, state and federal.
People in universities, companies etc etc."
It would be a rather large number and probably explains why any comment
that global warming is just not true gets such a violent reaction.

Anyway, no matter how many are so employed it is a large overhead.
The evidence seems to be getting shakier as time goes by.
I wouldn't have a clue whether it is true or not, but it does not matter anyway.
Posted by Bazz, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 4:12:42 PM
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Bazz, would you rather we ignore the effects of global warming when deciding what infrastructure to build?
Posted by Aidan, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 5:15:28 PM
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Aidan Quote "Evidence would change my mind. But you appear to be baulking at the numbers despite the absence of evidence there's a problem at all,"

You have outdone your ignorance here, I have given you the figures as provided in the article which equates out to close to 1 public servant per 12.5 people so that is okay by your understanding of economics.

Your first mistake is to believe the figures, you could easily add 100 to 200 thousand to that figure but you are just trying to be a SA, which you fail at.

How many would be still classed as public servants if there jobs were not contracted out, they are still doing the exact same job they were before but now are paid by a contracted organization which gets the money from the Government plus extra for admin costs.

Go to centerlink (public servants)they send you to job search providers (used to be public servants).

Hospital cleaners, catering and others used to be done by hospital employees now done by contractors.

The list is long.
Too much effort for you but just go to your local council, state or federal government office and ask them for a FOI request on what services that they used to provide are now done by contractors.

There you have by slight of hand reduces the number of public servants (in name only) but still appearing to keep up the same level of service.

ABC subsidize something to the tune of over 1 Billion dollars per year
you might as well count them as private public servants.

What about the people employed by AUSAID what are they classed as?

All above paid for by taxpayers except for a very very small number public servants do not generate any revenue equivalent to what they get.

On the money side there would probably be many more hundreds of thousands of retired public servants getting health pensions.
Posted by Philip S, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 5:19:51 PM
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//As of June 2018, Australia was home to 1.987 million public sector employees, of which 240,700 worked for the Commonwealth government.//

Can we get a break down of those figures? Because whilst I'm quite certain we could cull some of the bureaucracy, and that nobody will miss parking inspectors, a lot of those public servants will be in jobs that need doing. Teaching is a necessary profession, medicine and nursing are necessary professions, emergency service workers are necessary profession, the defence force is necessary... the list goes on.

There are certain services currently provided by the public sector which we are still going to require, and what's more require people because they're jobs that machines aren't well suited to (yet), regardless of how we pay for them. And I'm not sure it's always advantageous to privatise everything.
Posted by Toni Lavis, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 5:52:50 PM
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no one will ever be able to identify the efficiency or otherwise of that many public services. In some places they are totally overstaffed and in some places understaffed. Usually top and middle management is well overdone with few Indians doing the work.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 6:15:17 PM
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Yup nothing to really see here.

For instance Commonwealth public servant numbers have been decreasing for years even while the population figures have been climbing. Blokes like Philip S kick up about staffing so the government contract out their roles which lessens workers pay but fatten CEO wallets or reduces centrelink staffing levels to way less than just inadequate.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 13 November 2018 7:43:31 PM
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Those with a philosophical slant opposed to public enterprise will always have a mind set that conjures up images of public servants as overpaid, lazy, incompetent fat cats, on high salaries sitting around an office somewhere high in the stratosphere spending their working life staring out the windows and drinking coffee, thinking of their huge retirement pension.

Philip S the economic expert claims we have too many PS's on the payroll. Well. where is your evidence to support that claim. We all know a million plus is a very large number, be it dollars, jellybeans or public servants, Philip what is the correct number, in your view. Don't say Aidan is a SA for asking a reasonable question, something you can't answer.

Belly rightly points out, not all PS's are of the white shirt and tie brigade. Check out the bloke who picks up your garbage every week, but then again he doesn't suit the image and obviously is surplus to requirements.

Indy, who is totally rabid anti public service, claims to know, having dealt with PS's from way back. The old argument, knows a few, and with an already biased assessment of what they are like, assumes all are worthless, and should be done away with.

The best comment has come from Steele;

// Yup nothing to really see here.//
Posted by Paul1405, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 7:10:05 AM
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Indy, who is totally rabid anti public service,
Paul1405,
What is with you Lefties that makes you make statements such as the above. I'm not totally anti public service. Show me one single post where I stated that.
What I am rabid anti about is public servants such as you appear to be. Insipid, pointless, expensive to keep & of no obvious use or benefit to the the nation that harbours you & your ilk.
Real Public Servants are vital, pretend ones are a waste of just about everything.
Like the senior bureaucrats I worked with who had to recruit people to cover for their incompetence & let me tell you, there were many.
I recall one woman with integrity who resigned 6 months before her retirement & forfeited a lot of benefits because the itegrity-devoid culture in that branch of the public service made it it impossible for her to bear.
Several of the EO's said when I asked them where they envisaged the area they were
managing would be like in ten years time, I got the same answer from everyone of them. "I don't really care, I'm not going to be here then". In my personal experiences that is the general unspoken attitude of particularly the ALP supporting public servants.
Posted by individual, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 9:06:33 AM
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Indy, you have never been known to give any credit to the work of public servants, its always this vitriol about how incompetent they all supposedly are, in your opinion, by default praising your ability at the same time, which could be rather questionable.

//What I am rabid anti about is public servants such as you appear to be// You got that wrong, I'm not a public servant, how do I appear to be so, what else do you get wrong? Then there is no way you could encounter any more than a tiny fraction of the almost 2 million PS, so your generalisations can't be nothing more than your speculative opinion, or you have been extremely unlucky to have only encountered none but incompetents. Without doubt in a workforce of around 2 million there would be a percentage of incompetents, that is not unique to the public service, where were you employed?
Posted by Paul1405, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 9:42:02 AM
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A quick look at the back of my envelope tells me that just the pay for public servants is costing around $14,000pa for every real worker employed in private enterprise in the country. That is a hell of a lot for the limited usefulness of most of them.

Interestingly, when Campbell sacked 15,000 or 20,000 of them when assuming government in Queensland, there was not as much as a ripple in the service to the public. In fact building approvals actually sped up, as there were not as many in boxes & rubber stamps to hold them up.

Surely no one who has passed a roadworks could suggest they do much. I passed one yesterday on the way to town. 8 "workers" 6 men & a couple of ladies had 4 trucks, a front end loader, & a couple of lollypop people "employed" to remove a small dead tree, or actually large shrub, that had fallen down on the side of the road.

It took them 5 hours to do what my son & I could have done with a chain saw & a trailer in about an hour.

After our last big storm, 3 men with chain saws, & 8 helpers cleared enough of 3 large gum trees off our road to let cars through, then with a few more, cleared a number of very large trees from Tamborine Waterford road, that had a dozen cars, including some locals, trapped between them. God help them if they'd had to wait for council.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 1:00:49 PM
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I have to be honest. I've worked both in the public
sector, and in the private, and in both
areas you can find waste and mismanagement -
depending on leadership and organisational behaviour.
I've learned from both experiences and can see the
pros and cons of both areas. Certainly, the Public
sector could do with a shake-up - but who would do that?
Probably an in-house committee - who'd write another lengthy
report with accompanying recommendations that would end up
somewhere in archives for future records and post-graduate
students to study.
Posted by Foxy, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 1:25:44 PM
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The best public servants are those who know they are public servants.
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 2:26:43 PM
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Yeah, I'm still not sold on the idea of a privatised defence force, fire brigade etc.

But computers are getting pretty good these days; I reckon you could replace most the bean-counters, pencil-pushers and chair-warmers with computers programmed to count beans, automatic pencil moving devices and hot water bottles. Mind you, I think that applies in private enterprise as well - seems to me there's a lot of people out there sat at desks essentially doing sod all except keeping a watchful eye over a computer in case it chucks a wobbly.
Posted by Toni Lavis, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 5:42:22 PM
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Philip S,
>You have outdone your ignorance here,
Looks like you're having some pronoun trouble there!

>I have given you the figures as provided in the article which equates out to close to 1
> public servant per 12.5 people so that is okay by your understanding of economics.
Why wouldn't it be? I want government to be efficient and capable. Those figures neither support nor undermine any claims about whether it is currently either of those things.

>Your first mistake is to believe the figures,
So you think the figures are disastrous but you don't believe them.
Is your disbelieving the figures the reason you think they're disastrous?

Your comprehension's very poor. I never told you I believed the figures, nor even made any claim which rests on the assumption that they're correct.

>you could easily add 100 to 200 thousand to that figure but you are just trying to be a SA,
I am proud to be a South Australian!

>which you fail at.
All I've failed at in this thread is getting you to explain the premise you started with. There appears to be a pattern here - you haven't explained the reasons for your fear on the UN thread as well.

>How many would be still classed as public servants if there jobs were not contracted out,
>they are still doing the exact same job they were before but now are paid by a contracted
>organization which gets the money from the Government plus extra for admin costs.
At long last you're starting to think!

There's a widespread perception that smaller government is more efficient government. But in reality it's not so simple. Cutting staff for its own sake often leads to false economies, with government departments often having to engage consultants to do the work for twice the price. Also the quality of the work can suffer.

Governments employ people to do things. If you have a problem with that, let us know what it is. All we've seen so far is that you don't like the numbers - but that's your problem, not ours.
Posted by Aidan, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 5:46:56 PM
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but that's your problem, not ours. Troll remark.
Posted by Philip S, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 8:41:15 PM
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>Troll remark.

No, a statement of fact. You've had ample opportunity to explain why you consider those numbers to be "a recipe for disaster" but every single time you passed it up, often resorting to ad hominem and baseless accusations. Indeed you still have the opportunity to tell us why your dislike of the numbers is Australia's problem. Though I'm expecting you not to, as it seems to be driven by pure gut instinct, oblivious to inconvenient facts.

I mentioned before that I wanted government to be efficient and capable. One of the best examples of why this is desirable was the School Halls Scheme. Despite a few idiots on this board swallowing Tony Abbott's lie that it was an unmitigated disaster everywhere, the actual situation varied by state. In Victoria and NSW, where oversight was contracted out to the private sector, the waste was as bad as Abbott said. But in the rest of Australia, where the state governments oversaw it themselves, they achieved quite good value for money. And in WA, where there was a much higher level of scrutiny, they achieved excellent value for money.
Posted by Aidan, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 9:42:09 PM
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Aidan "but that's your problem, not ours."

Not ours, since when were you designated as spokesperson for others?

Qualified troll who is delusional enough to think he is able to speak for others.

Just out of interest who has given you the job of speaking on there behalf.
Posted by Philip S, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 10:30:10 PM
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Conservative government and their free enterprise mantra, the private sector always does it better. In New South Wales for years the Public Works Department built everything from railways, to roads, without any problems, without any fuss, things got done, the State got what it required through public enterprise. Then the Conservatives came alone with their private enterprise mantra and the stuff ups began. Firstly they sold off all the states juicy plums to their mates at bargain basement prices, GIO Insurance the Rural Bank etc, it all went in a great sell off. Of course they left the State holding on to the costly millstones, like the NSW Railways, no thought of sell that, there is no money to be made. Then new infrastructure was contracted out. A good example is the 12km light rail project, what a disaster! A case of employ a electrician when you require a plumber. The Spanish contractor is a disaster, no experience at all, and is now suing the State for $2.1 billion, claiming they were lied to. The project is way behind schedule, its all in the courts, and the taxpayer is going to be out of pocket billions of dollars, thanks to the Conservatives and their free enterprise mantra, its certainly not free!

Someone mentioned 'Hard Boiled' Newman in Queensland, and how he sacked 20,000 public servants. The voters soon woke up to who was the most useless public servant of the lot, and sacked him.
Posted by Paul1405, Thursday, 15 November 2018 8:24:19 AM
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Philip S,
>"Just out of interest who has given you the job of speaking on there behalf."
ITYM "...their behalf?"

In this context, "ours" meant "Australia's". As an Australian citizen I don't need anyone else's permission to speak for the national interest. Everyone else is, of course, free to dispute what I say - but I notice you're avoiding doing so yet again!
Posted by Aidan, Thursday, 15 November 2018 8:53:08 AM
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I was a public servant for years, working for the health dept in three states. I have a granddaughter working in the NT government finance section who does at least 8 hours overtime a week because they are so short staffed.
Certainly Centrelink is not overstaffed, judging by the wait times in both their offices and telephone service.
What I saw as the biggest problem was the inability to sack incompetent workers who had permanent eemployment . These workers got shuffled around different departments in an effort to disguise their incompetence.
I see these days that many public service jobs are offered on contract basis, which is good for weeding out the poor workers but not so good for financial stability.
Posted by Big Nana, Thursday, 15 November 2018 10:30:23 AM
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Did any one watch "Four Corners" on Monday
evening (12/11/2018)? It was focused on
the ABC's sacking of Managing Director,
Michelle Guthrie, and the resignation of
former Chairman, Justin Milne. Both were
interviewed and each gave their versions
of events. It was disturbing to watch -
and even more disturbing that Michelle
Guthrie ended up accusing Milne of
"inappropriate touching," which she is now
pursuing in a lawsuit.

Who's telling the truth? - hard to tell.
Maybe, we'll learn the truth - in days,
months, years, to come. The ABC deserved
better than what they got.
Posted by Foxy, Thursday, 15 November 2018 11:19:52 AM
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Aidan Little troll out trolling again.

Quote "I don't need anyone else's permission to speak for the national interest."
The fact you claim it is for national interest does not necessarily make it so.
Posted by Philip S, Thursday, 15 November 2018 5:48:06 PM
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Little troll,
>The fact you claim it is for national interest does not necessarily make it so.

DUH!!
(Hence the rest of my post this morning)
Posted by Aidan, Thursday, 15 November 2018 7:35:55 PM
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Foxy,
When the truth becomes part of the lie & vice versa you get what's know as the Media, ABC up front.
Posted by individual, Friday, 16 November 2018 6:26:23 AM
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As a comparison to 2 million in public sector, UK public sector in 2017 was 5.4 million employees . The ratios to population are the same.
Posted by nicknamenick, Friday, 16 November 2018 12:39:12 PM
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Individual,

That's why independent media is so important.
As well as keeping our national broadcaster separate
from the government's influence as much as possible.
Posted by Foxy, Friday, 16 November 2018 1:05:43 PM
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separate
from the government's influence as much as possible.
Foxy,
Yes & the present opposition's also.
Posted by individual, Friday, 16 November 2018 4:11:06 PM
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The reall issue with an out-blown public service is the cost to the taxpayer for a very poor return.
Of course the vital services are there & no-one's complaing about that part. Whatever work someone performs it should be expected to be beneficial to all not just the hordes of unemployables by choice hidden within the sponge that is the PS.
I know quite a few highly paid who are not worth a quarter of their salary yet they are allowed to stay on & climb the ladder to higher positions by literally doing nothing at all that is of benefit to society. This is a mentality issue & only the influence of a national Service can address this deficiency in morale.
Don't just blame Governments, blame the opposition as well & the people who lack the mentality to work for the benefit of all.
Posted by individual, Thursday, 22 November 2018 6:05:18 AM
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