CPSU has been critical of the Government’s vacuum of information to VPS staff and the anxiety being felt by employees being left without information amongst the constant speculation that there will be cuts and possibly redundancies.  It’s reprehensible to leave the workforce hanging.

Treasury and the Government have been building the narrative over two months now that this will be a tight budget and have been selectively leaking stories mostly through the Herald Sun that the VPS will be cut as the budget borrowings were under servicing pressure as interest rates were rising.

At first the info being reported on consecutive Sundays was very vague and didn’t equate to anything we had been told.

In fact we were briefed some months ago that there would be a further round of ERP’s offered and that the workforce transition arrangements we had negotiated would continue to apply.  

We were briefed that Departments and Agencies would advise employees but this never occurred and it went all quiet.

The workforce transition policy included the Departments contributing to the savings efforts by cutting consultants so we produced the totals after all annual reports were tabled and advised the Treasurer’s office and exposed this lie and the Age wrote a damning story on Labor’s record with consultant spending in government.

The Herald Sun then produced the 1 in 10 must go story about DTF writing to each Department head seeking savings and we advised members on  29 March after confirming from several reliable senior departmental sources that this was in fact true.

Everyone was in shock. 

How could the Government be contemplating such an extreme response and hurt the very people that they had stood next to in photo ops and declared heroes of the pandemic only months previously. 

The very same people who had dropped everything and responded to the 2020 Summer bush-fires and the recent flooding across the Northern communities. 

The very same people who are relied upon every day by Government to keep delivering services when agencies are so short of staff.