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| Down Under | |
| Reports: Job Losses as 175 Australian Govt Agencies Face Scrap | |
| 2014-12-14 | |
[AnNahar] Australia's government warned of further job losses Saturday as media reports said around 175 government agencies working in areas as diverse as Antarctic science and drought will be scrapped.
It axed 76 agencies in the May budget, and has since sold off the nation's largest health insurer Medibank Private among other assets and is now planning a larger round of cuts. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said the government's decision, expected to be formally announced on Monday as part of a mid-year economic outlook, would mean more jobs would go. "If you reduce the number of government bodies, there will be an impact on jobs across the public service," he told Sky News on Saturday. "What we will see is that as a result of our reform efforts so far, that the size of the public service will be back down to the same level as what it was in 2007, 2008. We think that's appropriate." The Weekend Australian reported that 138 government agencies will be abolished, including the Vietnam Veterans Family Study Consultative Forum, the Antarctic Science Advisory Committee and a High-Level Group on Drought. Fifteen more -- including the Australian Government Solicitor -- will be consolidated into government departments and a further 26 merged (resulting in the net reduction of 20 bodies), bringing the total loss to more than 170, the paper said. "The goal is to ensure that the government is as big as it needs to be but as small as it can be," Cormann told Sky News. Treasurer Joe Hockey is expected to unveil a blowout in the federal deficit in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook Monday, with some estimates of a Aus$5 billion (U.S.$4.1 billion) increase to Aus$35 billion given sharp declines in commodity prices and weakening demand from China. Opposition leader Bill Shorten said the abolition of scores of agencies could further damage the economy and stifle confidence at a critical juncture. "Australia's at a crossroads. We are narrowly reliant on our mineral sales globally to sustain Australia -- the price of our minerals is falling," he said. "The last thing Australia needs now if we want to have growth in the future... is for Tony Abbott to be killing jobs and killing confidence." | |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #7 Iff this are the Aussies one can imagine how much worse the UK or former USSR [China?]??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2014-12-14 22:29 |
| #6 Yokay, I'll bite = say it, ONE HUNNERT SEVENTY-FIVE??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2014-12-14 22:27 |
| #5 Unless you kkkapitalist wall streeter 1%rs expect shareholder board meeting piiig$$ to spend their million$$ allowing the natural right to have a living wage while wearing Hawaiian shirts. Foronward! |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2014-12-14 16:40 |
| #4 You say that like the Agency for Casual Fridays (ACF) is unimportant. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2014-12-14 16:36 |
| #3 These 175 "agencies" must be really, really small in the first place to have only "up to 170" canned. |
| Posted by: tipover 2014-12-14 12:29 |
| #2 Doesn't this deserve the 'smallest violin' graphic? Long, long time ago there was an agency call HEW in which all the Beltway's work on health, education, and welfare fit into one agency, because the federal constitutional authority to engage in such areas was small to non-existent. That was before the pols discovered they could raid the income stream from Social Security to buy votes with and thus the cancer spread. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-12-14 08:49 |
| #1 Of course, if you tried that here, the first thing to close is the national parks, and then they try to figure out if they can make everybody get off the interstate highways, and then... |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2014-12-14 08:45 |