The federal government of Australia is axing hundreds of jobs in various departments to meet its promise to deliver a $1.5-billion budget surplus in 2012-13. The layoffs and redundancies are part of the spending cut announced by Treasurer Wayne Swan last week.

Initial estimates place the number of jobs to be shed at 1,500, mostly in Canberra. Among them are employees of the Treasury, Department of Climate Change and Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport.

Mr Swan offered voluntary redundancies to Treasury employees and asked all departments to each save $500 million more for 2012-13. Climate Change Department Secretary Blair Comley made a similar call to workers in his agency since several programmes are slated to conclude.

The Australian reports that the Department of Climate Change will axe 300 jobs, equivalent to one third of the agency's workforce and the Department of Regional Australia will outline on Thursday the possible job cuts.

"We face a very tight budget situation over the next two years that we require conscious efforts to reduce the department's expenditure. Even after examining our supplier expenses and identifying savings, any realistic review of our future budgetary environment requires a substantial reduction in our workforce from the current level of just over 900, of which 830 are ongoing, to closer to around 600 people by June 2013," The Australian quoted Mr Comley's note.

News of the pending job cuts led Community and Public Sector Union National Secretary Nadine Flood to warn of damage to government service.

"These are massive cuts to staffing.... Losing 20 to 30 per cent of an agency's workforce must mean the government can no longer deliver the same functions," Ms Flood said in a statement.

"We are calling on the government to indicate what work would no longer be done by these agencies, and we're also asking government to maintain (Finance) Minister (Penny) Wong's commitment to avoid forced redundancies and protect services in regional Australia," she added.

The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Opposition likewise opposed the planned job cuts.

"The jobs of Canberrans are valuable, that those people have families, they have bills to pay as well and think that needs to be taken into account when this cost cutting is taking place," ABC quoted ACT Opposition leader Zed Seselja.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the axing of jobs are some of the tough decisions that the federal government has to make.

"I am a big supporter of the public service but, as a government, we had to make tough decisions to generate a budget surplus for 2012-13... and how we are dealing with some matters in regards to public service employment is a result of those tough choices," Canberra Times quoted Ms Gillard.

Other agencies that have announced plans to axe jobs are the Departments of Education (500), Resources (100), Veterans' Affairs (90), Bureau of Statistics (75), Fair Work Ombudsman (70) and ComSuper (50).

RELATED STORIES