19,000 jobs must go to end blowout, Motor Trade Association urges TELL US: Should the State Government slash public service jobs? THE State Government must "bite the bullet" and use forced redundancies to slash the public service to as few as 67,000 workers, a major lobby group says. In its State Budget submission, the Motor Trade Association urges Premier and Treasurer Jay Weatherill to take strong action to "bring under control the blowout" of public sector employees and wage costs. The submission says cutting the public service from more than 86,000 workers to 67,000 would put the budget in "very healthy surplus." MTA chief executive John Chapman said the transition would take five or six years "at a bare minimum." The state's peak body for the retail motor industry, which employs 30,000 people, represents 1100 business members. Mr Chapman also wants the Auditor-General to investigate the exact number of public servants, the cost and effectiveness of past efforts to reduce numbers and the use of allowances to boost salaries above the government's 2.5 per cent cap on wage increases. "The Government actually doesn't even know exactly how many employees it has," he said. The time has come ... to acknowledge that the current approach is not working and bite the bullet of forced redundancies. Mr Chapman said the Government should also consider joining with the private sector to deliver non-essential services or outsourcing. Mr Weatherill did not directly address the MTA's recommendations but said in a statement the suggestions sounded "remarkably like the Liberals' plan to slash 25,000 public sector jobs," referring to a comment last year by former leader Isobel Redmond, which she retracted. "It's not surprising given the (MTA) chief executive is a former Liberal staffer," Mr Weatherill said. Opposition Leader Steven Marshall said he was in the final stages of "constructive" meetings with public sector unions and would release his party's policy "in the coming weeks." But he also predicted that "an incoming Liberal government won't be taking an axe, we won't be waging a war against the public service," he said.