The Government cannot pay for the benchmarking explosion and will not do so. It will disguise the failure to pay in all sorts of language which will eventually result in another pay deal. ICTU will demand this, that and the other and walk out of the talks a couple of times before Christmas. There will be drama in Government Buildings, but another national pay deal will emerge. ICTU will say benchmarking is being met and others will say it is not. There will be a pay pause of some sort and all concerned will be happy with whatever eventually comes out of the pot. The public finances will suffer, however, because too much money is being paid to public servants. Everybody knows that this is the real problem, but politicians do not have the guts to stand up to vested interest groups because they yield too many votes. That is a shame because other areas of the public service have to suffer unnecessarily.