Page 185 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 1990
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servants, the bossa nova. Mr Kaine has indicated that 3,000 jobs will go, but we have not had a word out of him about where those jobs will come from in the private sector, if he is capable of delivering anything in that respect for the people of Canberra.
The agenda is well in place. The Government is going to get stuck into the public service of this Territory. It is going to get stuck into the health system in this Territory. Its agenda is about to be endorsed by the Priorities Review Board which is being set up to demonstrate, or try to demonstrate, that the Government has some credibility in financial management.
The issue is not a very important one in terms of the future of Canberra, because I think it will expose the hollow rhetoric that is already starting to flow regularly from the government benches opposite. It will show to the people of Canberra that this mob is about destroying some of the very important things that the people of Canberra enjoy. One of the most important things that the people in Canberra enjoy is jobs in the public service. They do not want to see 3,000 of them shoved down the gurgler, and that is what this Government is on about.
I go back to the issue of consultation and the fact that this Government has run out of business and has not been able to demonstrate the competence to fill the business paper. Again I raise the issue of the lack of consultation, which has already been raised once here this morning. I think it demonstrates the style of the Government opposite.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (11.23): Mr Speaker, I rise briefly to indicate my support for the Priorities Review Board that the Chief Minister has announced. Unlike the Opposition, I see great merit in this proposal.
Mr Berry mentioned that the Government is putting off having to make the hard decisions by appointing this board. I have no doubt whatsoever that if the Government had proceeded to make dramatic changes in the structure of the ACT public service or make other large and half-baked, half-considered, adjustments we would have had cries of "intemperate action, lack of consultation, lack of thought" from members on the opposite benches.
It shows me very clearly that the Opposition is not going to be constructive about this problem. We did not see much evidence when it was in government that it was prepared to be constructive about the problem that we face with the impending loss of special Commonwealth funding for the ACT. The previous Government, I have to say, did very little to face up to that very major problem, and we see that now, in opposition, it is going to do even less to do so.
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