With all the predictability and melodrama of an old pantomime, the heads of the five families (the unions) delivered their pay freeze offer to Peter "Don" Gutwein yesterday.

The five families offered the Don six months - but on the condition that the 500 be spared.

But if he is to keep true to his word, the Don cannot accept what is before him, even if it is the day of his daughter's wedding.

The task he set the five families was to freeze wages for 18 months, or else up to 500 public sector workers could find their jobs had been figuratively sent to sleep with the fishes.

And last week, he said to the families: "the time for negotiation is over, capiche?"

The Don's answer appears a foregone conclusion, but it will be officially determined when he and the other consigliere meet in cabinet on Monday.

The above scenario may have stretched a metaphor to breaking point, but the situation lends itself to farce.

Rightly or wrongly, the government is completely unwilling to negotiate with the unions, thinking it would be impossible to get all 14 relevant unions to agree to the cuts it deems necessary.

Making things worse is that the methods of communication have been indirect, or non-existent, creating even more mistrust and allegations of dishonesty from both sides.

With the exception of tersely worded letters from either side, most of the communication between the government and the unions has come via members of the media.

The government is also painfully aware that it is now late October, and the fate of the current budget -and the key savings measures contained within - still hangs in the air.

Mr Gutwein has made clear that the government will seek to blame unions if it does break an election promise and cut frontline staff because of the wage freeze failure.

Politically, that would be a difficult sell. Voters know where the buck should stop, and it's usually in the big sandstone building on Salamanca Place.

But whether by accident or by design, the government has ended up with major concessions from the unions that it could use if it is serious about finding structural and long-term savings.

The unions have agreed to a "root and branch" review of the public sector to identify what is and isn't a core government service, and therefore what (and who) can be scrapped.

With a wages bill that has blown out from less than $1.6 billion a decade ago to more than $2.4 billion in the current financial year, it is abundantly clear that the state has a serious problem.

And the experience of previous governments of cutting hard in one year before backing down or getting booted out of office shows that some long-term thinking would go a long way.

If the government backs down ever so slightly, accepts the current pay freeze offer and then get stuck into a warts-and-all review, it could end up with everything it asked for and more.

It's not as confrontational as The Godfather, but a little less drama would do the state some good.