Australia To Axe 175 Agencies, Thousands To Be Jobless
Australian public servants are waiting on Monday for the announcement which agencies would be closed as part of the federal government's saving measures for its Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.
Ahead of the announcement, 175 government agencies were placed on the list, of which 10 are made up of four councils and committees set up by the Council of Australian Governments and scrapped in 2013 that resulted in number of councils reduced to 8 from 22.
The 175 agencies would add to 76 identified in the May budget. The total is expected to save Aussie taxpayers over $500 million in the next four years. However, it would also result in thousands becoming jobless.
In the initial cuts of government agencies, 8,000 government employees were laid off, said Nadine Flood, national secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union.
Shadow infrastructure minister Anthony Albanese pointed out that the job cuts are not new since these have been previously announced and the Abbott government is just "reannouncing old cuts."
Finance Secretary Mathias Corman did not rule out forced redundancies but blamed in on the previous Labor-led government for passing to it a bloated bureaucracy.
But Opposition leader Bill Shorten didn't buy Corman's explanation and stressed it is not the best time to cut jobs now as it would negatively impact the Australian economy just when the country's unemployment rate hit a 12-year high of 6.3 percent in November.
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Shorten added, quoted by Skynews, "The finance minister's talking gobbledegook ... it's a cliché masquerading as an economic policy."