Fed: Climate bureaucrats "twiddling their thumbs": Oppn

AAP General News (Australia)
04-29-2010
Fed: Climate bureaucrats "twiddling their thumbs": Oppn

CANBERRA, April 29 AAP - Public servants working on the now-defunct emissions trading
scheme should not be paid to "twiddle their thumbs", the federal opposition says.

The Rudd government has pushed back from next year the start of its carbon pollution
reduction scheme to at least 2013.

Hundreds of public servants are working on the implementation of the scheme, some of
them senior staff on high salaries.

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said the wages bill was $90 million a
year and the government must "review" the jobs.

"It's time for the government to review the phantom jobs in the phantom department
being paid real money by real taxpayers," he told reporters in Melbourne.

"We do not think that every one of those jobs there should be paid for by the taxpayer
for people to sit there and twiddle their thumbs."

Mr Hunt would not be drawn on how many public servants should be sacked.

AAP ca/rl/jlw/

KEYWORD: CLIMATE JOBS

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