Public servant and ministerial travel to be halted, as new details of department restructures revealed
PUBLIC servants and government ministers could be banned from travelling out of the NT for business purposes in almost all instances post-coronavirus, Chief Minister Michael Gunner says.
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GOVERNMENT ministers and public servants could be banned from travelling out of the NT for business purposes in almost all instances post-coronavirus, Chief Minister Michael Gunner has said.
It comes as the NT News can confirm taxpayers will save nearly $800,000 a year from just two chief executive positions removed as part of the restructure of the government agencies from 15 to 11.
Speaking to Katie Woolf on Mix 104.9 on Wednesday, Mr Gunner said he would look to continue preventing public servants and ministers from flying interstate or international to conduct business, considering the ease of holding high-level meetings, such as fortnightly national cabinets, via teleconference.
A spokesman for Mr Gunner confirmed this is what the Chief Minister planned to do push post-coronavirus, with the exception of essential frontline public servants flying out to assist in hospitals or the like.
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The NT News can also confirm that two of the chief executive positions shed through the restructure of government departments from 15 to 11 were level 6 executive officer positions, which are worth up to $391,000 a year.
But Mr Gunner has remained firm that no public servants are being sacked via the restructure, saying this was about making government “work faster, smarter and harder for Territorians”.
Asked if voluntary redundancies would be offered to those in high-ranking positions following the restructure, a spokesman for Mr Gunner said this would be up to each receiving chief executive as they work through their new structures.
Four departments, including the Department of Primary Industry and Resources and the Department of Tourism, Sport and Culture, have been broken up and its elements subsumed by new super agencies.
Two of those dismantled departments were headed up by acting chief executives and they will resume their deputy roles under bosses of the new departments.
It has been confirmed that the head of the now-defunct Department of Primary Industry and Resources, Alister Trier, has been asked to head up the government’s Gas Taskforce.
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The Chief Minister’s office has also confirmed the bureaucracy tape-slashing report public service heads were told to prepare as part of the Territory Economic Reconstruction Commission’s interim recommendations is ready, though separate to the departmental restructure, and will need to go to cabinet either next week or the week after before being released publicly.
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