Has the public service finally learned the value of a dollar?
As he announced plans to curb public service spending and a temporary end to public service hirings, Treasurer Cameron Dick produced the first $1 he ever made. It seemed rather apt given our present circumstances, writes The Editor.
Opinion
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AS HE announced plans to curb public service spending and save the state $3 billion over four years, Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick produced an old paper one-dollar note from his first pay packet.
It seemed rather apt given our present circumstances.
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The State Government has, somewhat belatedly, announced a temporary end to public service hirings while also reducing the size of its most highly paid senior workforce.
Glossy annual reports will also be scrapped and replaced by plain black-and-white documents as part of the $3 billion cost-saving measure, while social media accounts will be switched off and contracts and consultancies wound back.
So as he flourished the dollar note, Mr Dick declared it always reminded him of the value of each and every dollar.
“With so many Queenslanders facing economic hardship because of the impact of COVID-19, we know that we have to make every dollar count,” he said.
“We have a solemn obligation to ensure that every dollar of Queensland taxpayers’ money works as hard as possible and is not wasted.”
Mr Dick is on the money with that observation as the state, even as it celebrates the reopening of its borders yesterday, reconciles itself to the hard slog ahead.
We are going to have to navigate our way through an economic climate which many financial experts are comparing to the grim years of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The public service must, like the private sector, trim its sails to match the economic winds.
And that does not mean removing frontline employees who do the grunt work in health and law enforcement.
It does mean cutting back on the fat which can so often be found in the middle and upper management ranks which appear to have again become swollen in recent years.
However, it is a shame that it has taken the current crisis to force the government to make these commonsense decisions, given how Queensland’s debt has soared at the same time.
No one expects the government to slash and burn its way through the public service in the manner of former LNP premier Campbell Newman.
That may have been a courageous attempt at reform, but it ended abruptly when Newman and the LNP were removed from office in 2015 after just one term in an electoral backlash which will be remembered by future administrations for decades to come.
But opposition’s Treasury spokesman Tim Mander is also correct in questioning how the state’s voters are to judge the value of the hiring freeze and the scaling back if we don’t know exactly how many public servants have been hired in the past year.
The last time Labor released its public service statistics was in June 2019, and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that public service numbers have swollen in volume quite considerably in the past 13 months.
However, full marks for the cutbacks announcement.
It has sent a clear signal that a measure of austerity will be part and parcel of life to come in this state for the foreseeable future.