The public sector — not guilty!
If you're a public servant, a lot of important people, like John Howard, Ray Martin, John Laws, are trying to make you feel very guilty:
- guilty about a $6-$8 billion federal government deficit (although you pay your taxes like anyone else);
- guilty about working in the last "sheltered workshop" while everyone else has to compete (although levels of stress leave in the APS have never been higher);
- guilty about entitlements won through years of union struggle.
Funny how there wasn't a hint of this talk before the federal elections, isn't it?
To intimidate public servants into accepting Howard's "mandate", all the old lies and distortions are being revived: it's frame-up time again for public services and public sector workers.
So here is the case for the defence.
Charge 1: The Australian public sector is too big.
Of the 24 OECD (advanced industrial) countries, Australia ranks 17th in total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, and below average in terms of public sector employment. Government expenditure in Sweden is over 60% of GDP; in Australia it's around 35%.
Charge 2: The deficit is the result of the public sector being too big.
The deficit is the result of insufficient growth and insufficient tax income. These are both the consequence of deliberate government policy. If the deficit is a big problem (and that's a big if) it could be rapidly reduced by increasing taxes on those to whom Labor gave a huge tax bonanza — big companies like News Limited which are paying tax at an effective rate of less than 2%!
Charge 3: The public sector deficit leads to the "crowding out" of private investment by making interest rates higher and transfers an unfair debt burden to the next generation.
In a recent article in the Business Council Review, former EPAC head Fred Argy, no great friend of public ownership, says: "Improvements in economic infrastructure ... or in health and education may often be more productive than private investment [and] the macro-economic effects (on interest rates, the current account deficit, inflation etc) are broadly the same whether a given infrastructure project is financed by private or public borrowing".
What's more: "The outstanding debt of Australian governments has been falling over the past 40 years and has been more or less steady even in the past 15 years ... Australia's public sector deficits and public debt are low by world standards".
Charge 4: The public sector is always less efficient than private industry.
In particular cases around the world the public sector has been found to be (i) more, (ii) less or (iii) just as efficient as the private sector. The reasons have less to do with ownership than with how advanced capital equipment is. If governments have a policy of running down the public sector (as both Labor and Liberal do), it's very simple to "prove" that public means inefficient.
Now, while these charges would be thrown out by any impartial jury, there is one fact about the public sector which Howard, Reith and Costello want us all to forget: the more run-down the public sector, the lower the living standard for working people, the poor and unemployed.
There's no way that the Howard government can cut APS numbers by 10% without reducing services by an equivalent amount. That's a direct assault in areas of most need — people on welfare, environmental safeguards, quarantine controls, education and training.
This while profits for the big corporations have never been higher and Kerry Packer can merrily lose $17 million on a couple of throws at Jupiter's Casino!
That's why defence of the public sector isn't only a defence of jobs: it's a fight to preserve resources vital to a decent, humane society.
[James Vassilopolous is a member of the Community and Public Sector Union.]