Page 2427 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The cooperation the Government speaks of with Telecom and Optus is also a welcome development if it leads to a major new business presence in the ACT, and particularly in the short term. But it also will have little impact on the ACT economy this year. When you boil it all down, there is not a lot there.
Unfortunately for the private sector in the ACT, there is nothing in the budget but an increased financial institutions duty, a business incubator at Kingston and funding for the National Industry Extension Service. I concede that these are valuable and I welcome them, but they are hardly enough to make any significant impact this year. I think it would be fruitless to examine the small number of programs the Government will be supporting by the provision of the odd $250,000 or $500,000 a time. The budget papers identify them; but, taken together, they contribute only marginally.
I believe that I am obliged to make some observations about what might have been done and what still remains to be done by any government that has the heart and the vision to administer the ACT as it must and should be administered. My comments relate to the two essential and interdependent halves of the whole. In summary, they concern the public sector, which must be reduced significantly in size, and the private sector, which must be stimulated to grow in both size and diversity. The Government's management approach to the public sector is clearly to abdicate from active intervention. Where specific strategies have not been identified - and I use the Chief Minister's words - and few have in fact been identified, the Government relies on its public sector managers to determine how the prescribed 2 per cent saving will be met. No specific strategies have been published, other than a non-specific restructuring, with staff redeployment rather than staff reductions. With some 60 per cent of recurrent costs in salaries, that strategy is likely to be of only limited success.
The other restructuring initiative - and I use the word loosely - is to increase the training levy from 0.5 per cent to one per cent of salary. I do not know what contribution that will make to jobs. A new human resources management system is to be introduced to provide more efficient personnel management, at a cost of $3m this year and $1m next year. That expenditure will still not reduce the size of the public service or address the functional issues that need to be dealt with. It might allow the Government to come up with some accurate information about personnel, but that is all it will do. Then there is the initiative to reduce energy consumption. Although one is tempted to refer to turning out the lights and using only pay telephones, energy efficiency, of course, is to be encouraged. Unfortunately, even an exceptionally efficient public service that remains in its present configuration will be too big and too expensive for the ACT to afford for too long.
The Government must cease putting its head in the sand, hoping that the future will go away. The future is here now, and we must deal with it now. This budget has wasted yet another year of time that we can ill afford. There is a difficult but clear alternative to the Government's budget, and that is to take action now to reduce the physical size of the public sector; to identify redundant functions that need not be performed at all and discontinue them; to identify those services that can be provided just as well by the private sector, yet with benefits flowing from employment, growth and diversity; getting the costs of these services off the public purse by contracting out or by unqualified privatisation, which should be done swiftly; and moving corporatised functions away from being a cost to the government purse - indeed, they can become contributors through dividend payments, as ACTEW already has.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .