Australian bureaucrats’ playing with Barbie dolls and finger paint creates row

Will You Indulge in Finger Painting?

THE Federal government in Australia adopted a unique method of encouraging bond among government employees. It hired a firm to help bureaucrats play finger-painting, Barbie dolls and balloon animals.

But that soon created a controversy. After Australian media highlighted how taxpayers’ money was wasted for indulging the bureaucrats, the opposition political leaders joined the chorus making it a big controversy in a relatively clean Australian government set-up. As was reported by leading newspaper Herald Sun, the department of human services admitted that spending $2660 on a laughter workshop was “a misuse of public money”. It was also decided that no laughter services would be hired in future to pamper bureaucrats.

The rationale behind organizing such workshops was to create ice-breakers for people to have an informal moment to get to know each other better, according to reports. 

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