THREE premiers, a constant reshuffle of ministers and a change of opposition leader have cost NSW taxpayers $5.9 million in staff severance payments, says the Auditor-General, Peter Achterstraat.

In a scathing report, Mr Achterstraat said on average one in three government staff left their job each year, and 60 per cent of them received generous termination payments.

An audit found 147 media and policy advisers, assistants and chiefs of staff had been terminated from July 2006 to December 2009, with an average payout of $40,200. Another 110 resigned.

Although the redundancy packages were generally larger than those for staff in other states and the Commonwealth, all but two were within the government’s guidelines for ”special temporary employees”.

Mr Achterstraat was highly critical of the payouts to two senior advisers who left with a combined total of $235,000 – $177,800 more than under the guidelines.

As I lay in bed one freezing morning lately I wished it would rain so I wouldn’t have to get up and go jogging. But it’s a free country – if I disliked the idea of going out into the cold so much, why didn’t I just stay in bed? Because I knew if I wanted to be fit there was a small sacrifice involved. I also knew that when I make an effort I feel better than when I don’t. All of us make similar decisions every day.

There’s no law against wanting to have your cake and eat it – which is just as well because people do it all the time. This, I suspect, is a big part of Kevin Rudd’s problem. When Tony Abbott began worrying people by branding the emissions trading scheme a great big new tax on everything and the public’s enthusiasm for action on climate change began to slip, Rudd assumed we’d all be quietly relieved when he dropped the idea.

Instead, he’s been amazed to discover that decision caused him to drop hugely in our esteem. Why? It’s just a case of us wanting to have our cake and eat it. We wanted to worry about what the trading scheme might do to our cost of living but we also wanted action to reduce climate change.