Overpaid, underworked, oversized: These have long been terms that are thrown at government departments which endure endless swelling and shrinking, all at the mercy of the latest powerbrokers.

From claims of golden handshakes to premier Campbell Newman’s infamous culls, the public service continues to divide opinion.

This is the tale of 40 years of wars, wages and wrangling >>>

March 1987

Queensland public servants were being used to formulate policies for Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s federal campaign, Opposition Leader Nev Warburton claimed.

He accused Sir Joh of “an arrogant misuse of public funds’’ in his use of State Government facilities.

“It’s bad enough when Queensland taxpayers are paying the Premier an annual salary of close to $100,000 when he’s virtually abandoned that position,” he said.

April 1989

Overtime payments to Queensland public servants cost more than $1 million a week, according to figures tabled in parliament by Premier Mike Ahern.

The statistics, for the 1987-88 financial year, showed the total overtime payout was $53,806,296.12. Meal allowances for the year cost $1,845,640.85.

The Railway Department accounted for $33 million overtime, with the Police Department the next highest with $8 million.

Prisons Department employees were paid more than $3 million in overtime and Health Department workers $1.6 million.

August 1989

Queensland public servants joined the ranks demanding greater firearm control in Queensland.

The Professional Officers Association State secretary Don Martindale said: “Public servants like childcare officers, community correctional officers and inspectorial staff are operating daily in an environment where threats of bodily violence are made against them.

“They deserve consideration in the debate on gun ownership.

“Emotions of parents often ran riot when children were taken away from them into care by officers of the Department of Family Services.”

March 1990

Overtime and meal allowances for Queensland’s public servants totalled $94.8 million for the financial year ended June 30, 1989.

The figures showed that meal allowances cost $2.4 million and overtime $91.8 million.

The Railway Department with $35,652,024 in overtime and $794,043 in meals was the biggest spender, followed by the Health Department with totals of $25,128,322 for overtime and $205,966 for meals.

The Police Department was next with $10,992,095 in overtime and $432,991 in meals.

August 1991

Public servants could eventually work from home using “telecommuting’’ devices, Business, Industry and Regional Development Minister Geoff Smith said.

He said that telecommuting – linking people from outside venues to a central point through personal computers, modems and telephones – gave new meaning to the expression “taking work home.’’

“Telecommuting means you send the work to the workers instead of sending the workers to work,’’ he told a business seminar in Brisbane.

He suggested the Government could take the lead by allowing more public service work to be done from home.

March 1993

Queensland public servants reported misuse of government vehicles and equipment, stealing, harassment of staff and cuts to services because of budget constraints.

A University of Queensland research project on “whistleblowers’’ found that none of the public servants who reported their concerns were rewarded for speaking out.

Most people who “blew the whistle’’ claimed they had been victimised by colleagues and employers.

March 1994

Queensland public servants received wage increases of up to 37 per cent since Labor came to power in December 1989.

About 30 per cent of public service employees are in the AO1, AO2 and AO3 classification levels and earn less than $30,000.

They received a total salary increase of 18 per cent between 1989 and 1994.

Teachers, police and nurses were the big winners of the move to national rates.

June 1996

Queensland public servants were granted a full day off in lieu of paid overtime – more than 10 years after the entitlement became common practice in many industrial awards.

Time off for overtime worked had been limited to half a day for the Queensland public servants, although the former Goss Labor government had agreed in principle to work towards introducing the full day off.

June 1997

Queensland taxpayers paid $1.5 million each year to allow five senior public servants to be posted to Britain to “learn’’ leadership and management.

Opposition Leader Peter Beattie described the scheme as “an extravagant gravy train for fat cat bureaucrats’’.

Premier Rob Borbidge told an estimates committee meeting that the scheme was initially going to allow 20 public servants to train in Britain at a cost of $5 million.

But a Cabinet budget review committee decided to allocate only $1.5 million for the public servants’ wages, accommodation, airfares, moving costs and child support.

May 1998

More than 10,000 Queensland Commonwealth public servants lost their jobs in the years since the Howard Government had been elected.

Official figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed at the end of November there were 35,800 Commonwealth public servants employed in Queensland, compared with 45,700 in February 1996.

This represented a 21.7 per cent loss of workforce – a figure that had increased substantially in 1998 with the loss of more than 800 jobs, including 420 voluntary redundancies following the closure of the Commonwealth Employment Service.

April 1999

Public servants who used taxpayer-funded computers to access pornography were not entitled to their jobs, Premier Peter Beattie told state parliament.

His warning followed the suspension of three Department of Public Prosecutions junior officers for allegedly downloading pornography using their work computers.

The three were issued with “show cause notices’’ on why they should not be sacked or demoted.

Mr Beattie said there were professional conduct guidelines for public servants.

July 2001

Queensland public servants were pushing to leave work 15 minutes earlier each day under several proposed industrial reforms for the new millennium.

Most state government staff members worked a 36 1/4-hour week.

The proposal would reduce the working week of about 60,000 employees – including public servants, school administration staff, TAFE staff and corrections officers – to 35 hours.

About 120 delegates at the QPSU’s triennial state conference on the Gold Coast voted in favour of the push for a shorter working week.

January 2003

Public servants were winning “fanciful’’ entitlements simply for giving up “the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea’’, employers said.

Employers’ First feared generous public service pay deals would fuel unrealistic demands by private sector workers.

Employers’ First chief executive Garry Brack said public servants were winning “extraordinary’’ leave and other entitlements for working as little as nine minutes extra a day.

“That’s the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea,’’ he said.

April 2010

Premier Anna Bligh angered public servants with an unprecedented bid by her own department to play Big Brother and monitor attempts to claw information out of the government.

The Department of Premier and Cabinet told independent Right To Information units in other departments to produce fortnightly reports detailing the names of applicants and what potentially embarrassing information they are seeking.

The government had previously been criticised for allowing ministerial officers to talk to RTI units about impending document releases, while other states are considering banning all ministerial contact with decision-makers.

May 2011

More than 3000 public servants were set to pocket a lucrative taxpayer-funded golden handshake of up to 90 weeks’ pay under controversial State Government cuts.

In a deal described as “very generous’’, staff with little more than a year’s work in the public sector would qualify for the base payout of 30 weeks’ wages, or an average of at least $35,000.

But the Opposition accused the Bligh Government of squandering taxpayer money by not officially classing it as a redundancy program, which would have meant workers were paid less upfront but eligible for $100 million in concessions from the Australian Taxation Office.

May 2012

Public servants were ordered to bring their own tea and coffee to work and to drive instead of fly on trips as the State Government tried to save $100 million in six weeks.

In other money-saving crackdowns, indoor plants would be removed from some departments and catering budgets cut to stop the serving of food such as sandwiches at meetings.

A government spokesman confirmed that “all departments were looking for savings’’ as a first step towards winding back Queensland’s $85 billion debt.

In July public servants planned to step up their industrial action against the Newman Government after it was revealed 2000 jobs would be slashed from Queensland Rail.

March 2013

Almost 9000 permanent, temporary and casual public servants left the Queensland Government workforce in the last three months of 2012 but the number of highly-paid contractors remained virtually unchanged.

The December quarter workforce report published by the Public Service Commission revealed the actual number of public servants fell from 239,424 in the September quarter to 230,831.

Permanent employees paid an average $79,322 a year went from 186,259 to 181,832, and casuals earning an average $62,076 dropped by 2446 to 15,260.

Temporary workers were reduced by about 1700 but the number of contractors, paid an average $127,061 a year, were cut by just 64 to 1621.

January 2015

Public servants were voting early in the Queensland election to send a message to the man who betrayed their trust, the public sector union said.

More than 22,500 votes had been cast since pre-poll voting opened, the Electoral Commission of Queensland said.

Many of those were public servants wanting to get in early, Together secretary Alex Scott said.

“We know there’ll be more job cuts to come if (Premier) Campbell Newman gets re-elected as he seeks to privatise disability services, collective services and parts of our health and education system,” Mr Scott said.

April 2016

There are more public servants in Queensland than before the former Newman government’s controversial 2012 purge of the state’s bloated bureaucracy.

The Public Service Commission workforce statistics revealed the state employed 245,279 full-time, part-time and casual workers across all departments at the end of 2015 – more than the workforce of 244,135 ­bureaucrats that the Newman government decided it needed to trim by 14,000 in a move that cost millions of dollars in redundancy payouts.

Health and education were the biggest growth areas – with 3400 additional full-time equivalent positions created during Labor’s first nine months in office.

May 2017

A blowout in the number of public servants on six-figure salaries could be putting the state at financial risk.

A Queensland Audit Office report, tabled in parliament, found certain departments increased the number of staff on AO8 classifications – paid more than $110,000 annually – by between 20 per cent and 70 per cent over the past five years.

Shadow treasurer Scott Emerson said the increasing numbers of highly paid public servants had not improved service delivery.

February 2019

The average cost of a Queensland public servant jumped almost 12 per cent in five years – just under $100,000 per full-time equivalent, the state audit report showed.

Auditor-General Brendan Worrell’s financial audit report for the 2017-18 financial year confirmed both the number of staff employed by the state and their average cost was on the rise.

“Employee expenses for the total state sector increased from $22.8 billion to $24.4 billion,” his report, tabled in state parliament, stated.

Almost 250,000 public servants were on the state’s payroll in the 2017-18 financial year, up by more than 3 per cent on the previous year and up by almost 13 per cent over five years.

May 2020

Annastacia Palaszczuk personally wrote to the state’s 230,000 public servants urging them to take a holiday at home to help the Queensland tourism industry through its toughest challenge – Covid.

Ms Palaszczuk and Tourism Minister Kate Jones penned a letter, sent to the state’s huge public service, including teachers, nurses, fire fighters, police and doctors in a call to action for Queenslanders to support the local tourism industry by taking a vacation in our own state.

The Premier also vowed to ask Queensland MPs to follow suit in a move that could pump hundreds of millions of dollars back in to the tourism industry.

July 2020

Up to 1500 public servants were to be freed from their city commute and allowed to work closer to home under a plan to rebalance the public service in a post-Covid world.

Treasurer Cameron Dick announced new flexibility arrangements that would allow workers to be based at Ipswich, Logan, Robina or Maroochydore in a move that was also expected to revitalise those suburban centres.

Mr Dick said the government was taking “a fresh look at the way we work” following months of working-from-home requirements for ­hundreds of thousands of Queenslanders.

January 2021

Queensland’s public servants wouldn’t be required to get the Covid vaccine once it became available, but it was strongly recommended.

Asked whether public servants in Queensland would be required to get the vaccine, Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said the government wanted the vaccine to be as accessible as possible.

“Queensland Health will work with Queenslanders and to ensure individuals are informed about how, when and why the vaccine is being rolled out,” she said.

January 2022

The number of Queensland public servants earning at least $120,000 a year jumped by 18 per cent in just 12 months, after many workers were pushed into higher wage bands.

The public sector figures revealed public servants earning $120,000 a year or more made up about 16 per cent of Queensland’s public service, well above the average national salary of about $90,000.

As of September 2021, there were about 38,006 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees earning at least $120,000 per year – up 18.3 per cent from 32,107 the same time the year prior, placing them in the top 20 per cent of wage earners in the state.

It comes after wage increases pushed many teachers, police and other public servants into higher wage bands during a time of historically slow wages growth.

March 2023

The number of Queensland public servants who were sacked from their jobs surged by almost 1000 per cent in a single year – with the introduction of vaccine mandates playing a big role.

There were 915 terminations across the Queensland public service in 2021-22 – up from only 84 the year before.

The state’s Public Sector Commission confirmed 807 of the terminations in 2021-22 were due to noncompliance with mandatory vaccine requirements for employees working in “high-risk settings”.

The jump in terminations also came amid a big increase in the number of work performance matters that were recorded in the Queensland public service.

October 2023

Queensland public servants were offered five days special paid leave for psychological distress if they were “grieving the outcome” of the failed Voice referendum.

Public Sector Commissioner David Mackie wrote to directors-general saying they could offer workers special leave – an entitlement that is usually unpaid – in addition to the sick leave.

Mr Mackie said the initiative was to ensure government workplaces were kept “psychologically and culturally safe” following the decisive referendum result.

October 2024

“It’s vital we invest in the strengths and capability of the public service.”

Premier David Crisafulli told the public service he would not be repeating the mistakes of the previous LNP administration in his first official correspondence in the top job.

But Queenslanders could expect a significant leadership shake-up and an overhaul of departmental structures as the newly-minted Premier and his deputy Jarrod Bleijie got to work shaping the state’s new government.

Mr Crisafulli, in his first message to the state’s more than 250,000 public servants, made clear the election scare campaign about LNP cuts to the sector was baseless.

November 2024

Labor claimed Premier David Crisafulli broke another promise after the LNP quietly announced that a total of 10 directors-general would be punted, with the other 10 safe.

Mr Crisafulli said in an interview the previous month that the majority of DGs would remain in their roles.

The LNP announced that a total of 10 new DGs would be appointed, with the police commissioner staying in his role.

Public Sector Commissioner David Mackie was appointed acting DG of the Department of Premier and Cabinet.