Queensland Rail wielded its axe on Thursday. However, the axe hit not only ordinary employees, but also high-ranking officials.

Besides the 2,000 workers who stand to become jobless, 12 senior executives who earn an average of $377,500 annually will also join their ranks. The affected employees represent 30 per cent of QR's workforce.

The move would trim the excessive bureaucratic fat at the executive level of the government-owned corporation. Queensland Rail had 12 senior executives who are paid over the CEO level while there are only two officials with similar pay scales at the Department of Main Roads which has a similar size as QR, Queensland Transport Minister Scott Emerson said.

Even at the mid-level, QR is also bloated since it has 60 general managers while Main Roads has only 20. As part of the cost-cutting move, Mr Emerson ordered QR to find savings by cutting positions at the communications and marketing departments. He ordered QR to instead focus more on frontline services.

He made the cuts in response to the 68 per cent rise in staffing for QR the past 24 months. Some departments logged relatively large increases in hiring for the same period, such as finance by 122 per cent and strategy and corporate services by 66 per cent.

Besides the axed QR workers and executives, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said 3,000 jobs were also shed from the state's public service due to the expiration of the temporary contracts at the end of the financial year.

The state's Department of Justice and Attorney-General's office is also expected to lay off 500 workers out of its total manpower of 4,000.

The job cuts which are part of cost-cutting measures, comes at a time that other public workers such as federal MPs, backbenchers, ministers and the prime minister got hefty pay increases while minimum wage workers were given a measly $17.10 per week pay hike.

Coalition leader Tony Abbott even defended the pay increase of legislators on the ground that he is working hard for the repeal of the carbon tax.

"I never forget that the taxpayers of Australia pay my salary.... I think that the average Australian, those people who work hard and struggle to meet their bills at the end of the week or month, they want politicians to make their burdens easier, not heavier," The Herald Sun quoted Mr Abbott.

"That's my job, to reduce the burdens face by the Australian people, and that's why I'm so determined to get rid of this carbon tax," he explained.

The MPs got a second wage increase of $5,550 on top of their first pay raise of $44,000 granted just three months ago. The hefty pay raise, which was allowed while the rest of Aussies are tightening their belts, was described by some pundits as the politician's version of carbon tax compensation.

Senator Nick Xenophon said he would initiate measures to repeal the pay increase when Parliament returns in August, similar to the vow by Mr Abbott to repeal the carbon tax if the Opposition wins the 2013 election.

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