Australia

Yesterday we had the hype - today a bit more reality.

NSW: Thousands of jobs face axe

TEN thousand more jobs will be cut from the public service and speeding fines will rise by 12.5 per cent to help drag the NSW budget back into surplus from a forecast deficit of more than $800 million next financial year

SMH,

8 June, 2012

The announcements will feature in the O'Farrell government's second budget on Tuesday, which is expected to reveal the forecast deficit for 2012-13 is $826 million.

This is largely due to a collapse in forecast GST payments from the federal government of more than $5 billion since September.

The Treasurer, Mike Baird, is expected to announce 10,000 public sector jobs will be shed on top of the 5000 redundancies announced in September.

But while the earlier job cuts were pursued through voluntary redundancies, that approach is not guaranteed this time.

Instead the cuts, anticipated to save $2.2 billion over four years, will be achieved by imposing a ''labour expense cap'' to target an annual 1.2 per cent reduction in labour costs across all government agencies.

The government will recommit to exempting nurses, police and teachers in schools, but not TAFE teachers, from the cuts.

It will also give directors-general of departments the flexibility to achieve the targets through measures such as job redesign or by reviewing contractor levels.

The increase in speeding fines is expected to reap the government $140 million over four years and follows the announcement last week by the Roads Minister, Duncan Gay, of a sharp increase in fixed and mobile speed cameras.

There will also be a crackdown on public sector annual leave balances. The government is expected to say that the interim commission of audit conducted by the former Treasury official Kerry Schott revealed about 12 per cent of NSW public servants had more than 40 days' annual leave owing.

The announcement on Tuesday will require accrued annual leave to be cut to 40 days by June 30 next year, 35 days by 2014 and 30 days by 2015. It is forecast to save $220 million over four years.

The measures, along with a forecast improvement in economic conditions, will contribute to returning the budget to projected annual surpluses of more than $600 million from 2013-14, rising to more than $1 billion in 2015-16.

Mr Baird declined to comment on the detail of the budget but confirmed the government would ''be taking a range of difficult and necessary decisions in our budget on June 12 to restore the state's finances so we can fund critical programs, services and infrastructure needs''.

But the secretary of Unions NSW, Mark Lennon, said the extra cuts would hit frontline services despite the government's promise that they would be spared.

''These cuts will drown nurses, police and other frontline public sector workers in paperwork and stop them doing the jobs they were employed to do - serving the community,'' Mr Lennon said.

''Telling departments to find savings through reduction of labour costs will demoralise the workforce through job cuts and the growth of casual and labour-hire employment.''

Mr Lennon said the latest economic data showed NSW was in the slow lane of the two-speed economy. ''Cutting jobs and services will only make that worse.''

Australia - Company collapse rates ahead of this time last year

The number of company collapses so far this financial year is up 13.6 per cent on the previous one, and many companies are expected to remain under pressure.

Business Spectator,

26 April, 2012

Accounting firm Taylor Woodings, which specialises in company restructuring, says that up to the end of April, company collapses totalled 9,074.

In April 2012, 869 companies failed, up seven per cent on the number of collapses in April 2011.

However, the number of collapses was 14.3 per cent down on the 1,014 company failures in March 2012.

Taylor Woodings said its analysis of data from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) showed that, generally, businesses struggled during April, especially in the retail and construction industries.

"The fragile global financial markets and economic conditions in Europe, coupled with low consumer confidence, will mean many Australian industries will remain under pressure in the near future," Taylor Woodings said.

"The European economic crisis will continue to have an impact on the outlook for the Australian economy and company insolvency figures.

"As a result, we expect insolvency figures to increase slightly in the coming months."