Hundreds of Canberra-based AusAID public servants are still in the dark about their future, six weeks after the scrapping of their agency was announced.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Canberra MP Gai Brodtmann said bureaucrats from the overseas aid agency had been approaching her, desperate for information on the details of AusAID's planned integration with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Ms Brodtmann said AusAID staff had not been told how many jobs would go or where in Canberra they would be working after the merger.
She wants to know why a five-member ''steering committee'' overseeing the amalgamation of the two departments has no female members.
The confusion reported to Ms Brodtmann echoes the situation in many parts of the public service in Canberra. Up to 4000 bureaucrats who are on the move between departments and agencies under the Abbott government's machinery of government changes will have to wait until December, at least, to learn their fate.
There is growing discontent at a perceived information vacuum, with rank-and-file public servants unhappy with the lack of news from management.
Wild rumours, including tales of mass sackings and a zero per cent pay offer in next year's enterprise bargaining round, are sweeping through departments as details of the changes are kept under wraps.
Hundreds of AusAID employees were bused from their offices in Civic last Thursday to DFAT's headquarters in Barton for an address by their new department's senior management.
But the AusAID rank-and-file came away complaining they had been told nothing new about their futures.
Morale is said to have been further damaged in the meeting when the aid staff shuffled en masse into the building's foyer while their new DFAT colleagues peered down at them from the first-floor gallery.
Ms Brodtmann told The Canberra Times that stress and anxiety were growing at AusAID in the atmosphere of continued uncertainty.
''They're just really concerned about what could be. There's a great deal of uncertainty about who is going to be integrated, who is not going to be integrated,'' the Canberra MP said.
''They're worried about what might happen if their job might go and where they're going to be located if they keep their job.
''If there's a duplication of function, who's going to get the job? Would it be the AusAID person or the DFAT person?''
Ms Brodtmann called for changes to the integration process. ''What I think is needed is a professional change manager to be running this integration,'' she said.
''I had a look at the steering committee and there's no women on the steering committee, which is causing some concern, too.''
AusAID's latest staffing figures show 829 of the agency's 1300 Canberra-based workers were women and more than a third of AusAID's 64 senior executives were female.
Ms Brodtmann said the stress was exacerbated by the suddenness of the new government's move on AusAID.
