Page 1463 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 1 May 1990
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On the Pru Goward show Dr Kinloch said that he did not agree with that figure or any other figure. He quoted a figure of 9,000 vacant places. Mr Speaker, who is right, or who is wrong? That is what we would like to know. Has the Chief Minister, in his budget strategy statement, given us the wrong information or does the Executive Deputy for education not know what he is talking about? Perhaps Dr Kinloch is being honest and will not be a party to the use of false figures to help the Liberals' hidden agenda, the privatisation of assets in the ACT.
Mr Speaker, a keen student of politics would not be surprised by the words of the Residents Rally party and the Liberals. None of them have ever had a connection with the people most under threat here, the lower levels of the ACT public service. When the Chief Minister's priorities review board wields its razor, the bosses will be okay. It is always the lower level public servants who are under threat. Of course, Mr Duby may laugh. Members of the No Self Government Party hoodwinked the people of the ACT well and truly. They have transformed themselves into the "Now Self-Glory Party". At least they have not thrown their schools or health policies out of the window. They did not have any, so they did not have to throw them out the window.
I know, however, that there are many public servants working for the ACT Government who thought that at least Craig Duby and Carmel Maher were "one of them". After all, they used to work with them; they thought they were "one of them". This budget strategy statement puts the lie to that. In his response to last year's budget Mr Duby called for an expansionary budget achieved by borrowing an extra $100m or so. This year he sits there as a Minister in the conservative Government and watches while his Liberal mates pull the razor on those he would have once considered his friends and work mates. They are not his now, I can tell you that.
Mr Speaker, let me now turn to an issue of particular concern to me, and that is the threatened privatisation of the workshops. When I was Minister for Urban Services I was approached by unions representing the workers in the special duty workshop. They told me that the work had been taken away from the workshop and, despite their best efforts to increase efficiency, the workshops were being threatened with closure. It seemed silly to me that workshop facilities were being duplicated throughout the ACT Government services and, after discussions with my ministerial colleagues, I ordered that no action be taken which would prejudice the future of workshops until a complete review of workshop facilities has been carried out. Unfortunately, this review was not completed by the time the Liberals and their cronies grabbed power.
In the Chief Minister's budget statement there are many veiled threats to privatise these facilities. The workers
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