The Australian Department of Hot Air costing $90 million.

The Rudd government’s reckless wasting of taxpayer’s money has no precedent. This is a disgraceful state of affairs by a fiscally irresponsible and incompetent federal government. That $90 million a year could be better spent on public housing, health, education etc. instead of useless bureaucrats doing nothing to earn their salaries at taxpayers' expense. - Werner

This is the plush new headquarters of the Department of Climate Change in Canberra /

The Daily Telegraph Source: Click picture to enlarge.

No climate staff to be axed despite U-turn. $12m a year salary bill for 408 public servants Rent for new offices $8m

TAXPAYERS will pay $90 million a year to keep 408 public servants employed in the Federal Climate Change Department - despite most of them now having nothing to do until 2013.

More than 60 of them are classified as senior executive staff on salaries between $168,000 and $298,000 a year. Their salary bill alone will cost an estimated $12 million every year. A further $8 million will also be paid in rent for plush offices at Canberra's Constitution Place until 2012, where it is believed 500 new computers will be delivered this week. Despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's decision on Tuesday to suspend the failed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least 2013, the department has ruled out plans to cut back staff.

A formal response by department secretary Martin Parkinson to a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday - the same day as the scheme's suspension - claimed the department would not offer redundancies.

The formal response, obtained by The Daily Telegraph, said there were no plans for "the immediate future" of any scaling back of staff.

According to official figures, the number of top-paid bureaucrats being paid up to $298,000 a year has almost doubled since January this year from 39 to 61. That was to gear up for establishment of the Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority, which will also now have no function. Since last year with climate change employees having risen from an initial 246 to 408.

Of the 61 senior agency officials, only nine have been inherited from the scrapped home insulation scheme. The majority, 38, were employed on the CPRS and a further 19 were employed on the renewable energy scheme which has also been axed.

But none of the 408 staff within the department will be shed even though the department's key function, the CPRS, has been axed.

Its own tender documents reveal a lease contract of $16 million for its offices which expires in 2012.

My thought for today. - Werner
Money talks - but credit has an echo. Bob Thaves