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The Abbott government's natural attrition plans for 12,000 public service job cuts look increasingly shaky, with more departments trying to use voluntary redundancies to shed workers. The Social Services and Finance and Deregulation departments are the latest agencies asking workers to take redundancy payouts, with evidence suggesting bureaucrats are increasingly reluctant to part with their jobs voluntarily. Treasury and Health have already confirmed that redundancies form part of their plans for reduced workforces. But a Canberra Times analysis found this week that only 251 public servants had left their jobs since the change of government and most of them pocketed redundancy payments as they went. Meanwhile, hundreds of public service contractors and temporary staff in Canberra are facing a potentially bleak Christmas after being told by their employers during the past few days that their contracts cannot be renewed under the government's new hiring freeze. Several agencies in Canberra have confirmed that their contractors and other ''non-ongoing'' staff have been told they will be out of a job under the terms of the ''interim arrangements'' announced by Senator Eric Abetz on October 31. The edict banned external hiring of non-specialist staff. Most agencies are following the lead of the CSIRO and interpreting contract renewals as new hiring. The final hope of thousands of public service contractors and temps across Australia lies with keenly awaited guidance on the new rules from the Public Service Commission, which may offer the lifeline of reclassification of jobs as ''essential''. The Finance department already shed more than 60 jobs through the same process this year. Departmental secretary David Tune told staff it had been a difficult decision to make on a new round of redundancies targeting middle-management. ''We have not taken this decision lightly and we are very conscious that in April this year we underwent a similar process that resulted in 63 VRs being accepted,'' Mr Tune wrote. ''However, after reviewing our revised budget forecasts and current priorities, and with a prudent eye on future pressures, we have decided that acting decisively to place ourselves in the best possible position for the future is the responsible thing to do. Current projections show pressure on our departmental budget is set to grow from $7 million in 2014-15 to over $19 million in 2016-17, unless we take immediate action.'' He wrote that under the new rules, the department was going to have to be ''selective'' in its hiring practices. ''These new processes will mean that we will need to be very selective in our recruitment for the foreseeable future, with a continuation of our existing policy of seeking to fill only critical vacancies and to maximise the number of those vacancies filled by people within Finance.'' Mr Tune also acknowledged that interim hiring arrangements mean that opportunities would make things tough for Finance bureaucrats looking for internal promotions during the next few months. ''I realise that this has and will continue to constrain opportunities for people in Finance and, in response, the executive board has decided to set up an internal mobility scheme,'' he wrote. Senator Abetz's office did not respond to questions on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the Social Services department said that forced redundancies were not planned, but that a range of strategies would be used to trim the workforce and save money. ''We have developed a staffing strategy which includes options such as natural attrition, filling vacancies internally, reviewing non-ongoing and contract staff, and redeploying employees to the department's priority areas,'' the spokeswoman said. ''Voluntary redundancies will be available in targeted areas of the department, rather than through a whole-of-agency approach.''

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