Staffing at the Rudd/Gillard Government’s Climate Change department reflect Labor’s chaos and dysfunction over climate policies, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment Simon Birmingham said today.
Questioning through Senate Estimates has revealed* that:
· at least 190 left the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency prior to its abolition in March, with $9.4m being paid in redundancies
· at the same time, 62 new employees at an annual cost approaching $5m were employed.
“The lack of consistency in Labor’s policies matches the lack of continuity in Labor’s leaders,” Senator Birmingham said today.
“Just as Labor keeps changing the nature of its carbon tax policies, it equally hasn’t known whether it’s Arthur or Martha, or Kevin or Julia, in regards to the status of the climate change department.
“Labor created a dedicated climate change department hiring new staff, then firing staff, then hiring staff, then abolishing the department.
“The only consistency in Labor’s carbon tax or climate change policies is that taxpayers always end up footing the bill in the end.
“Just as Kevin Rudd’s pretense of terminating a carbon tax that will still generate $58 billion in revenue by 2020 was a giant con, so too are any Labor claims to be efficiently managing their carbon bureaucracies.”
*See Estimates answers to questions on notice 1 and 4, available within ‘Answers to general questions that cross all departmental outcomes/programs’ at http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate_Committees?url=ec_ctte/estimates/add_1213/ccee/index.htm