Million-dollar man 'paid to do nothing'

EACH day for the past nine years, Peter Weygers has had a job to go to but he struggles to say what it is.

Peter Weygers

EACH day for the past nine years, Peter Weygers has had a job to go to but he struggles to say what it is.

The 69-year-old is a school psychologist employed by the West Australian Education Department on a salary of more than $100,000 a year. But since May 2004 he has been banned from schools and banned from contact with students he once counselled.

Colleagues call him "the man paid a million dollars to do nothing". Mr Weygers says he knows he will be a prime target when Premier Colin Barnett introduces forced redundancies into the state's public sector, ending legislation that is peculiar to WA and specifies all redundancies must be voluntary.

Mr Barnett announced last week that forced redundancies would become an option for government department bosses for the first time in WA as part of plans to shed up to 1500 jobs.

Mr Barnett said he expected there would be only about 100 forced redundancies. "There are a number of people in the public sector, their job has disappeared, or they're no longer capable of doing that," Mr Barnett said.

"People will only be given the compulsory redundancy if every opportunity is explored to find them suitable employment.

"I don't think the West Australian taxpayer regards it as acceptable that someone can be employed, paid a wage -- and often quite a significant wage, and basically doing nothing."

Mr Weygers has already resisted voluntary redundancy. In recent years he has survived complaints against him in the workplace that he believes stem directly from his role as WA Civil Liberties Council president.

In that role, he has taken up unpopular causes, defended serious criminals and was sensationally forced to give his DNA to police investigating the Claremont serial killings.

"Speaking as president of a civil liberties organisation, I can say I am an example of what can happen to a public servant who repeatedly criticises the government and police," he said.

"Bringing in forced redundancies will just make it easier to get rid of people who they have decided are difficult."

Mr Weygers said he had tried to be useful. He has recently written a summary of Daniel Kahneman's best-selling book about how the mind works, Thinking Fast and Slow, to save others the time it would take to read it.

But he said it was demoralising not to be able to do the work he was trained for.