Page 4473 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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Proposed expenditure - Division 190 - Transport and Engineering, $92,355,100
MRS GRASSBY (11.47): Although this will be passed in the budget, I would like a point made very clearly now about the fact that most of this area is to be privatised and people are to be sacked. I find the closing down of some of the areas very serious.
Mr Jensen: This is a scatter gun approach. Come on, put it on the table, Ellnor.
MRS GRASSBY: Mr Jensen is a man of many parts; it is a pity somebody did not assemble them better. The point that I am making is about the engineering area for the repair of buses and government cars, which has been moved from Kingston to Tuggeranong and splintered all around the area, with areas that are to be privatised, Mr Speaker. I object to it, and I want that said.
MR DUBY (Minister for Finance and Urban Services) (11.48): I am glad Mrs Grassby wanted to say that, because no-one else seems to know what she is talking about. I can assure Mrs Grassby and this Assembly that there are no plans to privatise the Transport and Engineering Division which has an expenditure of some $92m. Mrs Grassby has referred to car pool depots being based at the Kingston depot. I assume that is the area that she is talking about. There is no plan to privatise that area. It has moved, or will be moving, from Kingston, as she has said, and is going to the Tuggeranong depot to service the vehicles there.
There are no plans to sack any workers, and I refute entirely that any workers will be sacked. The only area that I can imagine she can possibly be referring to is the proposed sale of the Trade Waste Service. As I said, guarantees have been given in that area that no person who does not want to take a retirement package will lose his or her job. Such a person should be redeployed within the service.
So, again, I refute Mrs Grassby's suggestions. As usual, it is a matter of running something up a flagpole and seeing whether she can get people concerned about it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure - Division 200 - Urban Fire Services, $14,054,400 - agreed to.
Proposed expenditure - Division 210 - Government Services, $210,332,500 - agreed to.
Proposed expenditure - Division 220 - Agency Planning and Resource Management for the Department of Urban Services, $16,068,700 - agreed to.
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