960420

Australian public

servants brace

for sackings

CANBERRA: Australia's public service is bracing itself for huge job cuts, including the once unthinkable possibility of sackings.

The conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard, which gained power last month, says its Labor predecessor hid an enormous budget deficit. Cuts of A$8 billion (US$6.3 billion) will be needed within two years to balance the A$125 billion ($98 billion) budget, so programmes and staff must go, it says.

Canberra, the national capital, is horrified. The city is a purpose-built government city, like Washington DC, and has no other industry. Its private sector centres on support services for the government.

Worse, government officials privately concede the job cuts must fall heavily among well paid staff in Canberra's departmental head offices. It is harder to trim front-line workers in the rest of the country than policy advisers, the officials say.

"Half of the workforce in Canberra works for the public service," Manuel Xyrakis, president of the city's small business association, told Reuters.

"Since the election the real estate market here has frozen altogether," he said.

Australia has about 150,000 federal public servants, costing A$10 billion ($7.8 billion) a year but representing less than one percent of the national population giving the country one of the smallest public sectors in the developed world.

The government has not said how many staff will go and officials say that it does not yet know.

But state governments, already squeezed by past cuts to their federal funding, have been quick to offer suggestions.

"In South Australia we've reduced out budget sector by, in terms of staff levels, more than 10 percent," South Australian Premier Dean Brown said after meeting Howard last week.-Reuter