National parks and botanic gardens will be left to rot if jobs are lost, says South Australia's Public Service Association (PSA).   

It says 65 staff from the environment department will lose their jobs by June as a result of the state budget.   

PSA general secretary Jan McMahon says nine of the positions are at botanic gardens.

"They're currently staff who work there, they have a commitment to properly manage park plant records, they detail the information on ferns and certainly they protect these valuable plants," she said.

"The Treasurer, in an unprecedented attack on workers' conditions, legislated away rights that they had only negotiated with the Treasurer some nine months before that."   

But the CEO of the Environment Department, Allan Holmes, says the public should not notice a decline in standards at botanic gardens.

"We've invested substantially in improved technology, whether it's watering or equipment that does reduce the reliance on the human resource," he said.

Crook, life needn`t be all that bad.

Australia should get rid of work for the dole rubbish.  Its not funded properly.  Its not organised properly, and most unemployed people don't want to do it anyway, at least not by choice.