The pandemic “ response was a
powerful vindication of the long view of the public sector – that it is a necessarily deep reservoir of human talent and physical resources to be scaled up when additional community need arises.
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great challenges. The pandemic response was a powerful vindication of the long view of the public sector – that it is a necessarily deep reservoir of human talent and physical resources which can be scaled up when additional community need arises. People-to-people services – which is much of the day-to-day work PSA members are proud to deliver – provide the kind of social infrastructure that is bringing us successfully through the pandemic. If we want post-pandemic South Australia to be a just, democratic and civilised society, then our state will need state budgets that strengthen the civil structures and, above all, the people who are bringing us through the pandemic. And that’s our public sector people – our PSA members.
Feeding the Budget’s efficiency dividend beast The government also chose not to reverse their previously announced cuts and opted to include $198m in additional savings over the next four years. Reliance on never-ending efficiency dividends verges www.psaofsa.asn.au
It’s an Australian beast! The efficiency dividend, first seen in the Hawke Government in the 1980s, has become permanently embedded in Australian public administrations as a convenient blunt budgetary instrument. It is apparently an Australian invention. The efficiency dividend appeals to advocates of small government as it hinges on the resonating word “efficient” - its use, by implication, is that cuts to services equate to efficiency. This strict budgetary diet condemns many agencies (small ones in particular) to permanent contraction. What happens when a government agency which delivers services highly efficiently must continue to annually cut its budget by several per cent? Inevitably, such a course can only lead to cuts to essential services. As one commentator has said, efficiency dividends are like “weeding the garden blindfolded.”
on magical thinking. The annual budget contraction and the consequent increase in workloads has a deeply discouraging impact on PSA members and the services they provide. It is no surprise that PSA members rate the need to address unreasonable workloads as a high industrial priority.
As the demand for efficiency dividends continues long after the parliamentary showbiz of the Budget Speech, members will continue to be affected when departments seek to privatise or cut programs and services to feed the efficiency dividend beast.
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