By Julian Bajkowski and Paul Hemsley Queensland’s Minister for Transport Scott Emerson has left little to the imagination on what he thinks about the state’s previous train procurement efforts after he announced that “the Newman Government will sell 50 toilets to finally wipe clean Labor’s failed attempts to deliver regional train travel.” It’s still a […]
6 December, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski The Federal Government’s job cutting axe is set to fall on at least 56 Department of Human Services IT staff in Hobart, as agencies start to look beyond Canberra for forced retrenchment fodder in order to meet efficiency dividend targets. The proposed federal job losses in the state with Australia’s highest unemployment […]
6 December, 2013
By Paul Hemsley and Julian Bajkowski The New South Wales government is on the hunt for a new technology industry and procurement experts for the two key advisory panels it uses to help set overall strategy for public sector agencies. Minister of Finance and Services, Andrew Constance, issued the formal invitation this week as the […]
5 December, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski The prospect of Australia finally building a high speed passenger rail line along the East Coast of the continent has been softly revived by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Warren Truss, during a key speech to the influential Australasian Rail Association’s AusRail Plus conference in Sydney. Following […]
29 November, 2013
By Paul Hemsley and Julian Bajkowski Angry property developers have called on the New South Wales government to junk its highly controversial new planning system reforms bill, claiming concessions granted to get the laws past the Upper House now make it unworkable. In a scathing attack on the range of concessions granted by the government, […]
29 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski The Abbott government’s election promise of shedding 12,000 federal public service jobs voluntarily has started to publicly unravel after estimates of at least another 14,500 forced redundancies prompted by Labor’s loathed efficiency dividend opened a trapdoor under the Coalition’s plans. As Canberra’s public sector workers brace for one of the bleakest Christmas’ […]
19 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski The Abbott government is wasting no time in pushing its roads-led infrastructure renewal policy to the nation’s councils, after Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Warren Truss, pledged $300 million to replace decaying small bridges. In a speech pitched squarely at regional councils and the road freight industry, […]
15 November, 2013
By Paul Hemsley The Queensland government will deploy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on missions to more accurately drop payloads of herbicide on noxious weeds including prickly acacia, mesquite, parkinsonia and rubber vine to help halt their spread across the state. Commonly referred to as “drones”, the machines better known for firing lethal payloads at enemy […]
12 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski The Abbott government’s promise that its cull of 12,000 positions from the federal public service will only come through ‘natural attrition’ is coming even further unstuck after the Department of Agriculture told staff it wants 220 voluntary redundancies. An all staff email from Agriculture Department secretary, Paul Grimes, candidly admits that “natural […]
12 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski The prospect of looming job cuts in the federal public service is dragging down morale and feeding into a climate of deep uncertainty over job security, unions and Canberra’s Labor politicians have warned. As the Coalition government sets about attempting to thin the ranks of the bureaucracy by 12,000 positions through ‘natural […]
8 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski Australia’s leading provider of public sector salary packaging services, Smartgroup Investments, believes that business and employee confidence has bounced back following the Federal Election, with government car lessees now shopping around again. At a briefing in Sydney on Monday, Smartgroup chief executive, Deven Billimoria, said inquiry levels for novated vehicle leases from […]
22 October, 2013
By Paul Hemsley and Julian Bajkowski The NSW government has announced that it will outsource management of its office accommodation requirements after Minister for Finance and Services Andrew Constance called for expressions of interest from private sector suppliers. The move to outsourcing will send management of what the government estimates is a portfolio of 830 […]
2 October, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell and his Local Government minister Don Page could soon have the most formidable of internal opponents to deal with when it comes to trying to push through contentious and controversial council mergers. Christine Forster, a Liberal councillor on the City of Sydney and the high-profile and […]
30 September, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski The federal ministry of Local Government could be the first of many administrative casualties in Canberra after the function conspicuously failed to appear in the publication of Prime Minister elect Tony Abbott’s first Ministry list. In a document that provides a partial window into how the bureaucracy and machinery of government of […]
16 September, 2013End of content
No more pages to load
Margaret Times on: Government offloads Airservices boss
Moses Black on: Planning policies and book bans: NSW councils clash with state
Jojo on: Planning policies and book bans: NSW councils clash with state