Page 688 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 1990
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that might occur as a result of the election to be held this coming Saturday. I think the Prime Minister, a person who rarely receives any accolades from me, has in this case exposed the ACT Labor Party's campaign for the upcoming Federal election as baseless scaremongering.
With ads running in the ACT by the Labor Party, claiming that the Liberal Party would cut 4,000 jobs in the ACT alone, and Senator Bob McMullan ranting that 15,000 jobs would go, the Prime Minister has counterclaimed that the Liberal policies would add an extra 2,900 jobs to the public sector.
Mr Berry: If the answer is Liberal, then the question is stupid.
MR HUMPHRIES: I would like to know the real answer to the question. What does the Labor Party really think will happen under a Federal Liberal government? The electorate should not let the Labor Party's confusion let it think it does not know about job cuts. Within two weeks of the 1987 election Labor issued a press release axing 3,000 jobs in one fell swoop, and a month ago Labor announced that another 1,000 jobs were going. From the beginning of the term of this Federal Government until the end it has been involved in a war of attrition against the public service, particularly of this town. The Labor Party is like a junkie, doped up with job cuts, who seeks to appease his guilt by projecting it on to other people.
The Federal Liberal Party has not got into the job cut auction which is splitting the ALP. Our ACT Liberal Senator, Margaret Reid, has said that no public servant need fear for the future with the coalition's public service policy. Nothing in Federal Liberal policy would chop jobs wholesale, and the figure of 15,000 job losses is so much over the top as to be ludicrous.
The reality is that the Federal Government's failure to address public service reform seriously constitutes the greatest threat to public sector employment. In the face of the need for greater fiscal responsibility, Labor's "she'll be right" approach has wasted precious time for the public service reform to make the public sector financially secure in the long term. An efficient public service is our best guarantee of retaining jobs in the public service.
The Federal Liberal Party has announced a public service reform agenda which includes providing more opportunities for incentives in the public service, introducing a productivity improvement program directed at improving departmental work practices and productivity, applying productivity improvement targets for departmental running costs, rationalising functions to eliminate waste and duplication, looking at privatisation, contracting out alternative in-house suppliers and so on as techniques to improve efficiency. Those are things at which any responsible government should look.
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