Page 3545 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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change in numbers implicit in each of the budgeted program sums. The salary provisions for each program set the expenditure level, which is derived from the staffing numbers quoted, presumably. If they are not based on that, I do not know what they are based on. Simple addition of all the expected average staffing level, full-time equivalent, figures shows that the Government expects a total reduction of 520.
Now, these are not public servants' translations of government policies, although Ms Follett would have us believe that they are. They are figures promulgated by Rosemary Follett, MLA, Chief Minister and Treasurer of the Australian Capital Territory; not by the Under Treasurer, not by any other public official, but by the Treasurer herself. They are figures promulgated by her, and where else are the Government's policy objectives set down, if not in this document? Ms Follett cannot or will not answer the question at question time. Clearly, this is the policy, and it is not the figment of some public servant's imagination. Of course, it is interesting that it could be a transposition of numbers, from 250 to 520. I suppose some public servant could have made a typographical error, but I doubt it.
I have to say, Mr Acting Speaker, that I always found our public servants to be thoroughly professional. I believe that they have accurately translated the Government's policy. In this whole equation it is only Ms Follett who is demonstrating a lack of professionalism. She cannot avoid responsibility for her own figures by blaming her officials. So, presumably the net reduction is either 250, as asserted by the Treasurer, or 520, as explicitly stated in her budget papers. Who knows? Least of all, the Treasurer. As an aside, I could ask whether all the figures in the budget are as rubbery as these are, and I suspect that they are.
I am quite certain, however, that an employee working, for example, in an organisation embedded in program 19, public works and services, must, of necessity, begin to feel insecure when he or she reads that, of 789 people employed last year, 124 will go this year. That is one in five, or thereabouts. So, if there are five of them in an office, they know that one of them is going to go.
For other major reductions, just have a look at programs 22, 26 and 27. I am sure that the public servants in those areas are asking themselves the same question. So much for Ms Follett's assurance that redundancies will not be across the board, but will be "selectively targeted". This is the panic factor. When she found that she could not balance the budget, the selective targeting went right out the window and she took a different approach in the last two weeks leading up to the projection of the budget.
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