The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has spent almost a million dollars for bureaucrats to attend happiness workshops. Because it’s practically a given that if you’re in that department, you’re going to need cheering up.
Unfortunately some previously perfectly happy employees felt upset at being sent on the workshop. What were they doing wrong?
A Coalition senator scoffed at the expense, asking whether attendees had to be unhappy. And added that to really be unhappy, you ought to try Opposition.
So at least now you know that department staff will be beaming with joy as they close your school.
100 department staff were charged six and a half thousand bucks each to attend a five-day positive psychology workshop. Unfortunately they needed another workshop when they saw the bill.
What price happiness? Around six and a half thousand bucks.
The department dismissed the idea that the bureaucrats may have been happy to begin with. Certainly not after being charged over six thousand bucks for a pointless workshop.
Sounds like certain Liberal senators need to go to happy camp…
Labor have defended their actions, saying that if the Liberals had sent their senators to the workshops, they wouldn’t be such a bunch of sourpusses. / they’d be able to turn their frowns upside down.
And I’ve got to admit, if I was being sent on a 5-day positivity workshop at the taxpayers’ expense, I’d be pretty happy too!
Sure, almost a million dollars was spent on sending the bureaucrats to happy camp, but it’s still better than Howard’s old technique of sending all his ministers to frowny school.
Looks like the Liberals made the wrong decision – instead of sending their bureaucrats to happy camp, they sent them off to crappy camp.
A Liberal senator questioned whether or not the attendees were even unhappy in the first place. But come on – they were bureaucrats and teachers! Of course they were unhappy!
To save money, next time they’re just going to buy them a happy meal.
Labor senators have called for the Liberals to stop harping on the negatives, put on their biggest brightest “yes”-face, and think about rainbows and kittens! See? It’s not so bad!
I wonder how much Rudd had to pay for his weaselly little grin.
So us taxpayers just paid some American self-help twat a million dollars to run a five-day workshop? Quick, someone get me a workshop to cheer me up…
Day one of the workshop focuses on thinking happy thoughts, day two on how to enjoy mindless pen-pushing, day three on laughing at other people’s expense, day four is practical exercises of smiling with your teeth showing, and the final day brings it all together in how to cheerfully and contentedly close down schools.
There was one unfortunate incident when someone who was already happy was accidentally sent to the happiness camp, and broke their jaw smiling.
Unfortunately the furore over the workshops has meant that all department members have had to have their pay cut to cover it. Think… happy… thoughts…
The workshop teaches all sorts of techniques to increase happiness, from positive thinking to positive action to taking suckers for thousands of dollars in bogus workshops.
The workshops were run in January by Pennsylvanian self-help book author Martin Seligman, who said that taking over a million dollars for five-day workshops had made him an expert in happiness.
Pennsylvanian self-help book author Martin Seligman says money can’t buy you happiness, and he’s prepared to take a million dollars for five days’ work to prove it.
And if there’s one person who should know about happiness, it’s a guy who makes millions of dollars running bogus workshops…
Of course, if they’d spent that much money on ecstasy pills, we could ALL be happy!
Because if you can keep smiling, even knowing that it’s cost six thousand dollars for five days of psychobabble, you’ll never frown again!
A department official said that staff needed to be happy to be productive. And with that massive hole in their budget, they need to be damn productive.
But if there was one department in need of positive psychology at the moment, surely it’s Treasury.
According to his biography, “Dr. Seligman is now turning his attention to training Positive Psychologists, individuals whose practice will make the world a happier place, parallel to the way clinical psychologists have made the world a less unhappy place.” That’s right, we need less less unhappiness and more more happiness!
