Pollyana

https://twitter.com/thewatcher_BT

loz

Well the OH survived another day hope everybody has been as lucky. He is now the sole survivor (oh and a shared admin support) in his department. And in his particular field he is now the last man standing to provide an efficient cost effective service to EVERY public school and Tafe in Queensland.
Something has got to give sooner or later. Hang on in there folks

fish.01

...that sounds the same as many on the thread have said...it is proposed that the cuts are being made in haste with broad brush rather than being well thought out so both the cost and benefit is taken into consideration.

The previous govt got caught out by the GFC...they increased health and education spending over the 10 years so that qld wasn't as far behind the other states as it used to be under the conservatives without raising taxes to the levels of other states....they paid for it out of the increase in revenue from boom times instead - until the GFC cut this income. They also built a lot of neglected infrastructure.

Most other public service departments actually decreased in numbers over the 10 years so it is health, education and police that Newman will have to target to bring us backwards despite what he said before the election.

http://www.qtc.qld.gov.au/qtc/wcm/co...b4eb5e0aa731bd

bingobob777

I've meant to ask this a few times but never got round to it, but how exactly did Qld get in this mess?

Personal tax in Australia is at least as high as the UK, unemployment is lower, the mining companies contribute billions in tax.

How has Qld got in the position of having to lay off thousands of people, did it ever need them in the first place?

Amazulu

This is a problem all over the world - Greece, UK, Italy, Australia etc. Too many civil servants, and now comes the reckoning.

fish.01

In case you missed this from another post:

"The previous govt got caught out by the GFC...they increased health and education spending over the 10 years so that qld wasn't as far behind the other states as it used to be under the conservatives without raising taxes to the levels of other states....they paid for it out of the increase in revenue from boom times instead - until the GFC cut this income. They also built a lot of neglected infrastructure."

If you take out front line health and police (?) the number of civil servants/capita actually dropped ove the last 10 years. So increasing Qld's lagging health system and police/education is mainly what the caused the bill to rise.

I suspect that given most of the first-up decisions made by this govt have a whiff of ideology about them (civil unions, arts cuts, anti gay, appeasement of extreme religious groups, refusing to repeal gay defence murder law etc) these cuts are based more in ideology than need. At the same time the cuts are taking place the treasurer is overseas spruiking how strong the qld economy is and how the next few years will see govt receipts climb again. Rather than increase taxes to the same level of other states that we now match in services they have decided to slash services so qld will be behind other states again in health, education etc.

They are not just cutting jobs they are mass stripping awards of protections aka work choices style which is causing a lot of angst.

And of course despite their crocodile tears pre-election, asset sales have begun already.

A lot of this is of course supposition mixed with what I have read and my own bias but not very impressed so far...

Qld Treasury Report: http://www.qtc.qld.gov.au/qtc/wcm/co...b4eb5e0aa731bd

Pollyana

http://www.news.com.au/national/peop...-1226462472587

National Parks, Recreation, Sport and Racing Minister Steve Dickson has announced 130 positions have been identified as surplus to his department's needs, while another 148 people will lose their jobs in the State Development, Infrastructure and Planning Department.
The government appears to be stepping up its job cut announcements in the lead up to the September 11 budget, with today's cuts following on from yesterday's announcement from the Department of Natural Resources and Mines.
A total of 360 people were cut from DNRM, and 413 positions, as part of the government's public service restructuring program.

===============================

Thats quite apart from the fact that the Newman Dictatorship can now just change employment law whenever it sees fit.
I'm not even close to being an expert on the rules underlying politics, democracy or anything like that, but surely in a democratic nation like Australia there is something wrong if a State premier can just roll up and with one sweep of the pen change the entire basis of employment law in that State? Without agreement from other parties? More than once lately I have heard people say that Joh Bjielke-Pietersen lives......

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/quee...-service-watch
http://www.news.com.au/national/toge...-1226462272446

moneypenny20

I'm assuming some if not all of the sacked employees, with union backing, are challenging the 'restructuring'? I bloody hope so.

Pollyana

We have no grounds on which to challenge at present - he has pushed through the law change which basically says any service that is performed by a public servant can be removed from the public servant and given to an outside contractor to perform (without the need for tenders etc), and in addition any public servant can be given notice to leave at any time without explanation beyond the basic "someone just decided you job doesn't exist anymore". Doesn't matter what role you are in, years of service, level, skills etc, just "Here's a cardboard box, clear your desk, bye"
What has come to light in the last couple of weeks is the fact that the law didn't allow him to kick people out like that - so he changed the law. Thats what stunned me the most - this is supposed to be a democracy! So he kicks cameras out of parliament, holds cabinet session in secret, and then changes the law single-handedly just cos he doesn't like it
And sadly many Queenslanders are just being their usual laid back selves and saying "she'll be right" cos it doesn't directly affect them - yet.

moneypenny20

Really fricking sucks. What about those that were sacked before he moved the goalposts? Surely they have grounds? Even if he can get away with his dictatorship, he can't 'backdate' laws, can he? Or am I misunderstanding and he actually changed the rules before he started ****ing up the State? I still don't see that he can't be challenged for the way he's moved the goal posts though. May take a long while to work out the challenge which won't help those sacked of course.

Pollyana

No he's changed the laws since he started getting rid of staff. The unions started to use the IR laws to protect the rights of staff, so he changed the laws. Things like the fact that it used to be illegal to get rid of public servants and then immediately give their jobs to private contractors - thats now totally legal. Any job can be removed from the public domain now, the staff put out of work, and a private company called in to do it instead - stuff like IT and payroll, but also straight-forward finance and admin. Its now legal to get rid of all a department's admin staff and get a temp agency to fill all the positions instead. Makes Himself happy cos that means he has put more of us lazy good-for-nothing public servants on the streets, but produces a lousy service for the public because of the lack of continuity in departments, knowledge lost when people have to leave etc.
Looking at the disaster operations arena for instance - an awful lot of our work is based on years of research building up relationships with companies and other departments, knowing who he can call on for various supplies, and just having the knowledge from the previous times we've dealt with similar events. You put in a bunch of temporary agency staff to run the next major flood event & they won't know where to start, even new gov't staff rely on years of knowledge being handed down; temp staff won't know where to find the information on things as basic as declaring a disaster situation so you can legally remove people from their homes before they get swept away in a storm surge.

The unions are apparently lookinbg into how to challenge his constitutional changes, but I must admit I'm stunned that he is allowed to just change laws so quickly and drastically with no input from other parties.


http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/quee...816-249pt.html

Pollyana

For anyone on facebook - Keep Campbell to Account and Statewide Community Day of Action.

phat-dave

im playing devils advocate here and i know youve mentioned that youre personally affected but if what youve just stated is correct, then to be honest i can see why staff are being let go.

if youre telling me that for years and years staff have not put any policies in place to document how to manage disaster recovery nor document departmental preferred suppliers/contractors then we have bigger issues than a few thousand administrative staff being shown the door.

sorry but to me that just sounds like years of genuine inefficiency.

GarryP

Surely, since he is attacking the healthcare sector specifically, the quickest and easiest route would be to 'section' him as mentally incapable and a danger to the public.

It would take quite a while before he could extricate himself from that one.

Pollyana

We have plans in place but even the best documented plans need staff who know how to implement them. No disaster runs by a textbook. For example the TC Tasha floods affected three quarters of the State - every local area has plans, we then have regional and State plans, but a lot of these depend on being able to obtain help from other areas of the State - managing to change the plans and adapt them to run in the real situation takes years of knowledge of the plans themselves and the legal possibilities, for starters. These plans are constantly all under review - every new housing estate, every change to the landscape following a major flood, every realignment of council boundaries, every change to the routing of a road, every change to disaster-related legislation - they all mean a review of the plans for that area - thats 74 local government plans, at the basic level, plus other associated legislation, policy and guidelines - not only for during the disaster, but for recovery and rebuilding as well. Even running the disaster centres is currently a problem as we do not have sufficient staff left to manage a large scale response over protracted time.

One of our biggest current headaches on the supplier front is that for previous disasters we have used SDS via QBuild to supply bedding & water etc for evacuation centres and transport for such goods, at pre-arranged, not-disaster-inflated prices. As documented earlier in the thread SDS no longer exists, Newman has abolished it. I personally wonder if we have staff capacity at present to set up a system from scratch which will take years to run as efficiently as the last one did - that one was set up after TC Larry, took years to perfect, and worked fantastically during TC Tasha, Anthony and Yasi, largely because of prearranged pricing, returns etc.

Part of preparing for future events is to learn from previous ones - many staff employed to implement Flood Commission findings and monitor and react to climate change have now been made redundant - the whole Climate Change Unit has been shut down.

I am only talking from one department too, there are many others facing similar issues.

No-one is claiming there is no wastage and no room for reform, but the current methods are brutal and are causing more problems than they are solving.