Australia’s public servants are out of control.

Last night the Daily Telegraph revealed taxpayers have spent more than $754,000 over two years on NSW government branding, including style guides, templates, and a change to the official font used by government departments.

Yes, you read that correctly: some bureaucrat in the New South Wales government decided it would be a good use of taxpayer’s money to spend more than $750,000 changing the official government font from Gotham to Public Sans.

Not much of a difference is there?

Unfortunately for the hardworking taxpayer, the insanity only starts there.

This week another overpaid bureaucrat at New South Wales Health made a post on Facebook asking students studying nursing or midwifery to “check out the NSW Aboriginal Nursing or Midwifery Cadetship” above a photo captioned “be deadly in your career”.

Perhaps not the most appropriate caption for a job advertisement in nursing and midwifery, guys!

Next is a story from back in 2020.

As reported by the ABC, the NSW Department of Planning spent over $1.2 million dollars on indoor plants for its new Parramatta office.

In July 2020, NSW government employees were allowed to take a few hours off work to attend the launch of its ‘LGBTQ+ Network’.

While in December 2020, the government announced the NSW Treasury would look to hire an “Associate Director” paid $150,000 a year and a “Senior Adviser” in “Reconciliation Strategy and Delivery” paid $120,000 a year, “to support Treasury on its reconciliation journey”.

Believe it or not, the situation only gets worse over at the Australian Research Council.

Back in 2009, the Australian Research Council funded a three-year, $133,514 study titled ‘Governing Prostitution in the People’s Republic of China’ – a paper that set out to produce the ‘first detailed study of the governmental regulation of prostitution in present day China’.

Then there was the Research Council’s recommendation that the government approve a $160,000 grant to researchers at Macquarie University examining ‘sexuality in Islamic interpretations of reproductive health technologies in Egypt.’ Advance Australia will give $160,000 to anyone who can tell us what that bloody means!

Maybe the academic who was awarded an $180,000 grant to study the process of applying for grants should suggest some better ways for the Australian Research Council to allocate funding for projects with even a mild applicability to the concerns and problems faced by everyday Australians.

Perhaps he could tell the Bureau of Meteorology (who receive a million dollars a day in government funding) to pay for its own swanky Gold Coast resort suites while attending yet another talkfest instead of just sticking the $21,970 on the taxpayer tab.

Or even better, perhaps he could advise former New South Wales Minister Don Harwin to lay off the cake, flowers, glitz and glamour given he spent $10,000 of taxpayer money on cake, $10,000 on flowers and $20,000 on designer umbrellas for a lavish Sydney art gala at the Art Gallery!

As Mark Latham said recently, it’s now those who work for the government who are the new “privileged class”.

If only Marxist university professors spent as much time deconstructing “public servant privilege” as they do critically analysing “white, straight male privilege”.

Only then would the hard-working taxpayer get value for money…