Carr's budget slashes jobs

By Dave Wright and Nick Soudakoff SYDNEY — Following in the pattern of Labor and Liberal governments in other states, the NSW Carr Labor government slashed public sector jobs in its October 10 budget. This follows seven years of Liberal government cuts and job shedding. Four to five thousand jobs will be cut from the public sector but funding is being released for 300 extra police and $830 million allocated to Olympics infrastructure. Youth job programs were axed. Ethnic Affairs Commission funding will be slashed by 50% and ethnic community services cut by $2 million. Two hundred million dollars worth of capital works, including the Hornsby-Parramatta rail link, was deferred. Some 110,000 students will be forced to pay for travel to school. The Carr government has tried to pass off its first budget as a "welfare budget" by increasing spending on health and education. There will be 339 extra teachers for remedial reading and computer technology but no more for mainstream classroom teaching jobs. There will also be extra spending on some community, aged and disability services. Worse, this budget is part of a plan to eliminate all government debt by 2020. To even come close to this goal it will have to rack up huge surpluses in future budgets. This will mean big spending cuts and more asset sell-offs, when the next federal election is out of the way.