loz

Don't worry Polly mother nature WOULDN'T DARE allow another natural disaster while Newman is in charge..............or if she does he'll just change the legislation to make it illegal so send a flood or a cyclone....so everything is hunky dory in our once great state of Queensland......NOT

DeadVim

Looks like my OH is getting the boot through no fault of her own.

Now would be an ideal time for one of my interviewers to recognise my inherent genius

chris955

They will probably still be telling everyone unemployment is around 5%

Pollyana

Oh god I'm so sorry. So many people losing livelihoods for no good reason.
Keep waiting for the axe to fall on me, so far so good but I don't think its gonna last.

DeadVim

Could be a long drawn-out process too ... the uncertainty is the worst thing.

Good luck but Newman does have echoes of Maggie Snatcher about him ... I think I may have to fall back on my previous career as a porn star ... For shame ...

loz

My OH is hanging by a thread too........................good luck people we are going to need it x

I am so so sorry for those who have already gone to feed a megolomaniacs appetite for vengeance

chris955

I can't believe how many are being affected by this crazy man, what makes it worse is he only got in because people were fed up with the crazy lady.

Pollyana

I know Bernie and a few others on here rant about Thatcher, I'm starting to understand that feeling now, just a different target for the venom.

Best of luck to your wife,and to loz's OH, sad and uncertain times.....

moneypenny20

God, that sucks. Good luck to both of them and everyone else in the same position.

DadAgain

..and don't we all have a horrible feeling that its a trend about to repeat itself? Ditch the disliked lady for the total lunatic guy....

I cant remember ever being this scared about the direction politics was going to take in a country I've lived in...

Pollyana

Know the feeling, it is worrying. Its also not good sitting at work every day with this feeling in the pit of your stomch thinking "who next"

Its the stupid decisions - like lets merge Translink into the Dept Transport & Main Roads, and promptly cut the staff drastically so that not only can the agency not do its existing work but it now can't do the new work its been given either.

The agency my unit is working in at present has staff from all over the government brought together to work on the reconstruction of public assets (roads, schools, bridges etc) afetr the floods and TC Yasi. We now have a constant procession of people disappearing for a few hours at a time as their home agencies summon them back for meetings on job cuts. Most of them come back saying they have to go back to their home agency job or lose it, so off they go, which I can understand. But we are no wondering at what point will Newman realise that if he keeps taking the staff who are funding the reconstruction, there will be no more reconstruction.......

moneypenny20

He probably won't, but if it's pointed out to him he'll make a public announcement blaming Bligh and/or someone underneath him. His incompetence is staggering. It doesn't take a genius to know that to save money you can't just wipe jobs off the planet without working out FIRST how those jobs will continue to be done.

GarryP

I've been involved in large scale reorganisations in the past. Although quite a bit of effort goes in, it tends to be done at a financial level (if you don't put a choke chain on the accountants). The reason is its easy to take the financial figures, the wages spend, income, profit margin, etc. and identify where the spend is relative to the return. Even in government work, you can get figures on 'cases handled', etc. to narrow down on areas where its easier to justify cuts.

Bosses in the relevant areas will always say they can't do without - no question. Therefore you are left with trying to make sense of what the consequences might be of cutting something. Combining two areas that have similar titles looks like a good move - must be some synergies that can be delivered.

To go to a deeper level, actually model the flows the tasks, the how and why of the time taken and costs incurred takes much longer - and these type of reorgs tend to have a maximum of 3 months planning (Newman looks to have given even less). Unless you have explicit knowledge of the whole organisation already, you can't make particularly sensible changes with that amount of time/effort. If you DO have that knowledge, then you tend to be considered biased (and probably are).

The root problem is going in with the benefit aim "we are going to cut costs by x%", rather than "we are going to tighten up the efficiency and stop stupidity". One is top down, the other bottom up - and the KPIs that get dumped on that project almost require the approach that means dumb decisions will be made.

buzz

I'm public servant (with DAFF) and am worried about my job. But I'm not sure I agree with all the comments on here. IF it is true that the previous government left the finances in such a state (and from what I have heard I think that is quite likely) then cuts have to be made somewhere. So it is not so much the cuts I disagree with, rather the manner in which they are being made. I do think that there is a lot of waste in the public sector, which needs to be sorted out. Also there is definitely a sense of entitlement amongst a lot of people. Most of my colleagues work extremely hard, and we all work unsociable hours when it is necessary. BUT most of the people I know make sure to log those extra hours and take them as banktime - that concept would have been laughable in the private company I used to work in previously.

Pollyana

If they don't log the extra hours (and many of us don't) then they can run into trouble if there is a need to claim because of workplace incidents, or if a query ever arises about who was working on a certain day/time. My department has staff who work hideously long hours when there are disasters happening, and we can't log some of them because we are breaking loads of HR rules. The result is that we then have problems tracking who was pn shift when certain events happened - info that can be important in cases like the Lockyer Valley floods.