Page 1837 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 1 May 1991
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MR KAINE: Yes, I give that unequivocal undertaking. In fact, people do not seem even to have read the speech that I made yesterday in this connection, although they seem to be prepared to quote from it and misrepresent it. I made it quite clear in that speech that, if there were to be any change in the arrangements, there would be two fundamentals.
One was that the existing conditions of service that they enjoy under the APS arrangements would be the baseline from which we would begin to negotiate. The other was that mobility between any future ACT Government Service and the Australian Public Service would be retained for existing employees. They are two specific statements that I made in that speech. I have always made those points. They are basic to any substantial change in the Government Service arrangements.
MR WOOD: I ask a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. Minister, do your remarks yesterday about downsizing suggest that your proposal is a vehicle for staff wages and conditions cuts?
MR KAINE: Absolutely not; to the contrary. Let us be quite clear, Mr Wood. I have always said, ever since I have been Chief Minister, that there was scope for reducing the number of people on the ACT Government Service payroll. I have never said anything other than that. People keep putting figures on it: "How many are you going to fire this year?".
I have also said that we are not going to fire anybody; that the public service numbers will reduce by attrition or by people choosing to take voluntary redundancy packages. That is happening this year; it will happen next year; and it will happen in future years until the numbers employed by the ACT Government Service are, in my view, at an acceptable level.
Nothing that I have said implies any reduction in the level of their conditions of service. Nothing implies that people will be paid less or that their compensation packages will be less acceptable than they are now. Indeed, what I am proposing is that with a highly professional public service you can pay them more, by one means or another, increase their productivity and more than recover the cost of that additional wages bill or compensation bill.
That is the basic premise that I am putting forward. I think it is a sound management proposition, and that is what I intend to do in the long term. And, incidentally, three years from now I will still be sitting here, still putting that policy into effect.
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