You Asked For It

One might be amused at a hotbed of left-leaners such as the public service copping a swipe from Kev the Slasher:

CENTRELINK will make about 2000 workers redundant to achieve budget savings demanded by the Rudd Government's razor gang. Centrelink chief executive Jeff Whalan said his budget would be cut by at least $150 million next financial year.

But that would be mean, not just to those voted for their sackers but to those public servants who didn't.

One also finds nothing funny about practises that are guaranteed to send the economy into a hard to control downward spiral by not only reducing the number of jobs available in the first instance but also creating a perception of an economy going bad.

Other reports suggest 'front line' jobs will be retained.

Of course. You need people at the counters to serve their former managers.

One person who will be pleased is the woman with whom we chatted while queuing to vote last year. She said strong employment was making it so difficult to get staff for her small business. "A bit of unemployment would be good for me!" she said quite seriously. She also announced her intent to vote Labor.

She may remain pleased with the ability to pick and choose staff in the near future until such time as her business goes bung and she's standing in a different kind of gueue. Then she'll find how good a bit of unemployment is for her.

-- Nick