Hundreds of Canberra public servants ordered to move across town by the Abbott government are about to be sent back to where they came from after just seven months.
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The 400 bureaucrats made the trek in March from the Education Department in Civic to Social Services, about 10 kilometres south in Woden as their work on early childcare programs and policies was taken over by DSS.
But in yet another bureaucratic reshuffle, the public servants are being shunted back into Education and are preparing to pack up their desks again to head back to their old building on Marcus Clarke Street.
The federal opposition is not happy, with Labor's early childhood spokeswoman Kate Ellis saying the move was "short sighted" and expensive.
Social Services had been looking to offload unused office space it was leasing at Sirius House in the Woden Town Centre in Canberra's south until the orders came down that the department was taking over childcare policy from Education.
So instead of finding a tenant to sublet the space, DSS moved its 400 new employees into Sirius and nearby Aviation House instead.
A Social Service spokesman confirmed that similar moves were made around the country.
"Between April and May this year ECEC (early childhood education and care) staff located in states and territories were moved either into existing DSS accommodation or remained in Department of Education accommodation under MOU arrangements," the spokesman said.
But now, everything has changed again, back to how it was before, an Education Department spokesman explained.
"As a consequence of the October 2015 changes, responsibility for early childhood education and care has moved to the Department of Education and Training.
"The department is working closely with the Department of Social Services to transition the people involved in these functions.
"They will be located in our premises in Canberra."
Neither department could answer questions about the cost of the public servants' journey around the national capital.
But the Social Service spokesman indicated that the about-turn by the government was causing office accommodation headaches for his department all around Australia.
"DSS national office space vacated by ECEC staff will continue to be used to accommodate DSS staff," he said.
"DSS and the Department of Education are working closely together on accommodation for affected staff, including arrangements in the states and territories."
But Ms Ellis was scathing about the affair, saying the public servants' time had been wasted moving across town and back again when they could have been doing useful work.
"No wonder the government haven't been able to provide any information about their child care package – their public servants are too busy moving across the ACT and back again," she said.
"While I am supportive of the move of early childhood back to the education portfolio, it should have never been moved in the first place.
"Taxpayers shouldn't have had to wear the brunt of this short-sighted, and expensive move."
