Andrew Leigh

Today the Turnbull Government has taken its attack on the public servants at the Australian Bureau of Statistics to the next level.

Agency management have just announced to its staff that up to 150 jobs need to be cut in the next few months.

The ABS is announcing these job cuts just two weeks after admitting to a Senate Economics Committee that it will be spending an extra $30 million trying to fix the 2016 Census – the worst census ever and one of Malcolm Turnbull’s biggest stuff-ups.

Now the very public servants who have worked so hard to rescue the census disaster are being forced to pay the price for the Turnbull Government’s mismanagement with their jobs. 

Not content with stripping funding and resources from the Bureau of Statistics, leaving the position of Chief Statistician unfilled for nearly a year, appointing four census ministers in three years, then refusing to take responsibility for botching the census by pointing the finger at public servants and everyone but themselves, the Turnbull Government is getting rid of the hard-working public servants who have been saving it from itself.

This is to say nothing of the catastrophic impact further job cuts at the ABS will have on the confidence of those staff able to keep their jobs, as well as the quality and comprehensive nature of the data the ABS is able to provide to governments and stakeholders.

This government’s ideological obsession with downsizing the public service has blinded it to the important work that ABS staff do to inform public policy and help allocate government resources to where they are needed most.  

The Turnbull Government must immediately assure Australians that ABS staff are not losing their jobs because the Government’s 2016 Census failure blew a $30 million hole in the ABS’s budget.

FRIDAY, 4 NOVEMBER 2016

MEDIA CONTACT: TAIMUS WERNER-GIBBINGS    0437 320 393