Public service redundancy row Commonwealth public servants are being offered redundancy payouts and told they are free to return to the bureaucracy after just one week. But retrenched public servants planning a quick return to the bureaucracy face a shrinking job market and maybe falling foul of tax authorities. As many as 70 workers at the new Innovation and Industry super department are understood to have been "tapped" for voluntary redundancy in the past two months and told an exclusion period for re-employment would apply, in line with the Public Service Act. But bosses at the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education have told some of the "potentially excess" staff that they can start reapplying for public service jobs seven days after they leave. A departmental spokesman says the seven-day turnaround periods are within public service rules but public sector union the CPSU wants to see the workers resettled in other jobs rather than made redundant. In the past, retrenched public servants have returned to their old departments as contractors or temps but the Labor government's determination to slash its wage bill means such opportunities are harder to find. A rapid, post-retrenchment return to the service may also attract the attention of the Taxation Office with workers found to have been paid out for non-bona fide redundancies facing big tax bills on lump sums.