Page 1824 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 19 August 1992
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The quote that I would like to use here to illustrate what Mr Reith may in fact have been getting at comes from a St Patrick's Day function in Brisbane on 17 March. Again, it is a press quote. Mr Reith was asked this:
... I understand that 44 per cent of the people who are employed in the country are Public Servants. How do you propose to change ... that situation?
His answer was:
In the past, I think, that's been a question which has never been satisfactorily answered by governments in government. They've always had a lot of talk about how you deal with the problem but they've always been confronted with the nature, I think, of bureaucracy where, you know, you chop 5 per cent here and 2 per cent there and 6 per cent there and then you turn around a couple of years later and they're all back there again.
Then there was the famous Menzies quote:
... there's a great saying of Menzies, you know. He said the trouble with bureaucrats is they don't eat their young.
I would also like to refer to another press clipping from the Canberra Times of 8 April, where Senator Parer was reported as having said:
Canberra was seen by the rest of Australia "to be a city pampered by tax-payers and full of remote people who have no idea what is going on in the rest of Australia.
This is what we really call Canberra bashing. It is simple. What Hewson, Reith and company will do if they gain government is either move us away or privatise us. Either way, there will not be much of Canberra left. I can see negative aspects to that policy, but I am strapped to find anything positive. Destroying the public sector in this way will destroy the economy and, in fact, the fabric of Canberra. Not only will our public sector suffer; much of our private industry and - - -
Mr Humphries: I take a point of order.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think I can anticipate Mr Humphries's point of order, and I will uphold it. Would you please get back to the subject before us, which is No. 3 on the notice paper, Ms Ellis.
MS ELLIS: Happily, Mr Deputy Speaker. I feel bound to honestly debate this. We need to refer to other press clippings as well, to put the debate into context; and I am quite happy to pursue that avenue.
Much of private industry and many small businesses will also be destroyed. What for the rest of Australia is even more frightening, however, is that the services provided efficiently to the Australian community will no longer be provided by our very accountable and public public sector. Yet this is a Canberra that Mr Kaine would, in fact, like to see. Senator Bob McMullan, in his Canberra Times article of 12 July this year, stated:
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