Page 186 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Berry said that he sees 3,000 public servants going, and that is based on the comments of the Chief Minister. Apparently, he thinks this is a bad thing for the ACT - how outrageous that 3,000 public servants should go! I have to say that I find those - - -
Ms Follett: It's a bad thing for the 3,000 people losing their jobs.
Mr Berry: And their families.
Mr Whalan: And their children.
Mr Moore: And the multiplier effect.
Mr Berry: And the retailers.
MR HUMPHRIES: You have not listened very hard, Mr Berry, if you assume that people are going to be thrown out of work. You know perfectly well that the Chief Minister has made it very clear that those jobs will be trimmed by attrition, not by any other process. If you think that is unfair, you seem to have a very strange conception of what is fair.
I find it very hard to accept any complaints or bleatings from members of the Labor Party about the loss of public service jobs. I can recall the promises made by your bedfellow, the Prime Minister, about three years ago, during the 1987 Federal election campaign, about the loss of public service jobs. Three days after the Federal election several thousand public servants - it might even have been 3,000, I cannot recall exactly - were lopped.
Mr Collaery: It was 6,000.
MR HUMPHRIES: Was it 6,000? I stand happily corrected. So do not get up in this chamber, Mr Berry, and say that you are against the loss of public servants by whatever process, because your Government, at the Federal level, has been part of - - -
Mr Berry: It wasn't mine.
MR HUMPHRIES: Are you denying any affinity with the Federal Labor Government? That is an interesting admission. I will bear that comment in mind, Mr Speaker. It is interesting to see that the Federal Government is abandoned by its ACT colleagues when it suits their political purposes.
Mrs Grassby: Six thousand for the whole of Australia, and you're talking about 3,000 for the whole of Canberra. I know which I would rather do.
MR HUMPHRIES: I think, Mrs Grassby, if you cannot see the purpose of sometimes trimming the size of your public service, you obviously have a very strange conception of what governments are all about.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .