Page 3450 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 September 1991
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QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Government Service - Staff Reductions
MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Treasurer. Over recent weeks the Treasurer has consistently used a figure of 250 as the number of jobs that she seeks to eliminate from the ACT Government Service this year. I draw her attention to Budget Paper No. 2 where, at pages 22 and 49, there are figures of 500 full-time staff targeted for reduction. I would remind the Treasurer that this is a document published over her name, not the Under Treasurer's name. Can the Treasurer tell us how many of our ACT Government public servants should feel that their jobs are in jeopardy as a result of this Government's budget and its intentions over the next 12 months?
MS FOLLETT: I thank Mr Kaine for the question, Mr Speaker. I guess the first thing that I ought to say, as my colleague Mr Wood has reminded me, is that it is definitely not 3,000, which was the target that Mr Kaine set. Not only did he not achieve his target of 3,000; he actually presided over something of an increase in staffing during the time that he was in government.
Mr Speaker, the Government has made a decision, which I announced in the budget strategy statement, to reduce staffing on the administrative side to make a saving of $6m in this year and $10m in a full year, and that translates to roughly 250 positions. That is the Government's decision on the staffing reductions; but it has to be said, as Mr Kaine has pointed out, that the budget papers do provide indicative staffing figures from agencies.
Mr Kaine: They are not indicative. They are quite explicit.
MS FOLLETT: No, Mr Kaine, they are not explicit. The figures do indicate - and they are indicative, as I say - the full-time staff equivalent of the expenditure decisions that are incorporated in the budget. The budget consists of dollars, not staff. The figures that you are referring to are the translation by agencies of funding-cut decisions into full-time equivalents. So, it is not correct to say that that should be interpreted as the Government cutting 500 staff. We have made no such decision.
Mr Speaker, I would like to make a further comment, and that is that the budget contains a number of initiatives that quite clearly involve savings, and some of those savings could be made as staff reductions. Obviously, the eradication of duplication - for instance, the consolidation of the corporate services into a single corporate services bureau - ultimately may achieve some staff savings. In fact, it is obviously the intention that over time that may well be the case.
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