Story: Treasury

The fourth Labour government applied business principles to the activities of government departments. One consequence was a reduction in the number of public servants, or their redeployment in state-owned enterprises. In this 1988 cartoon, State-Owned Enterprises Minister Richard Prebble, depicted as a black-singleted shearer, is ‘fleecing’ a variety of government agencies, while at the back the ‘redundant’ may be headed to the freezing works.