SA audit excuse to drop promises

May 18, 1994
Issue 

By Melanie Sjoberg

ADELAIDE — The anxiously awaited Public Service Audit review, released on May 3, has confirmed the worst fears of trade union and community activists. The audit found that the state is in debt to the tune of an additional $10 billion.

The Liberals are claiming that the former Labor government left the economy in worse shape than they imagined, so now their election promises will have to be broken.

The audit commission has declared that the public service is riddled with inefficiency and recommends at least 4500 job cuts. Under Labor, the 1993 economic statement already cut the public service by several thousand.

The list of recommended cuts reads like an inventory of public sector services — nothing has been left untouched. It contains a re-evaluation of the role of the state government in the economy and recommends limiting its intervention to "core functions".

But the debt caused by subsidies to businesses, such as the 10-year tax-free period offered to some enterprises during 1993, isn't mentioned. More recently, Motorola has announced that it will establish a high technology export plant in Adelaide; the Liberals refuse to reveal the subsidy provided.

For public sector workers the picture is especially bleak, with the review suggesting that the "no retrenchment" policy be ended, along with permanent tenure. It wants long service leave entitlements to be reduced and government superannuation schemes to be closed to new members.

The overall philosophy fully supports economic rationalism: privatisation, corporatisation and user-pays prevail throughout the report. Its recommendations include larger schools through amalgamations and increasing student/teacher ratios and the contracting out or reduction of health services, especially outpatient services such as radiology, pathology, pharmaceutical and laundry.

It calls for a restructuring of the pricing system of basic services provided by the Engineering and Water Supply Department and the Electricity Trust and recommends that these services be contracted out. The EWS is also targeted for having too many unions.

The Commission of Audit has been proclaimed an independent inquiry, but it has been used by the Liberals as an instrument to justify their agenda of cutbacks.

The membership of the committee is revealing. Chairperson is Bob Thomas, chair of SAGSCO Holdings and formerly with the Australian Industry Development Corporation, the Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Executive member Don Nicholls was formerly with the New South Wales Treasury and associated with public sector and education cuts.

Members are Michael Janes, formerly corporate general manager of BHP, and Professor Cliff Walsh, executive director of the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, who has publicly advocated a further 9000 cuts to public sector numbers through further cuts in expenditure of $200-300million per year.

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