Page 2739 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 October 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
grazing will eventually cease on Red Hill, as it has ceased on all like areas in Canberra and in all other Australian cities. While it is intended that Mr Russell will maintain his grazing arrangement on Red Hill for the foreseeable future, it will be necessary for him, like all other Canberrans, to comply with the normal conditions required of ACT agistees, and that refers to signing a grazing licence arrangement and paying outstanding fees.
Mr Carleton also made some assertions about the size of the public service, Madam Speaker. He claims that no-one ever gets laid off in the public service and that the public service is actually growing in size during a national recession. Once again he has his facts wrong. I do not think he ever troubled himself with the facts. His assertions are wrong and he failed, again, to make any distinction between the Commonwealth and the ACT. Nevertheless, during the last full year for which there are statistics available, in the Commonwealth Government 1,000 staff were made redundant in terms of the redeployment and retirement provisions, and a further 900 left for inefficiency and discipline reasons. Clearly, Madam Speaker, Mr Carleton was not troubled by those sorts of figures. In the ACT Government Service some 490 individuals have ceased employment for one reason or another. In fact, Madam Speaker, from July 1991 to June 1992 the ACT payroll declined by 2.2 per cent.
Mr Carleton also made an interesting sortie to the Mugga Lane tip. I think he was confused as to where he was, but from the pictures I think that is where he was. Madam Speaker, the pictures shown in the article were not the tip but the Revolve recycling centre. Canberra does not have household collection of large white goods and large disposable items. Such collections are, in fact, carried out in other cities, but they are not carried out here. As an ACT government recycling and employment initiative, Revolve has been set up in order to run collection centres at each of Canberra's tips, and items which can be reused are collected and sold and the profits used to employ up to about 20 people. Clearly, he was factually incorrect and irresponsible in his treatment of that.
He made many assertions that Canberra has been isolated from the recession. Would that it were so. Madam Speaker, I think this is perhaps the most misleading intention in Mr Carleton's little effort. It is true that we do have a larger than average public sector. That was the purpose for which the ACT was set up. Nevertheless, in the last eight years the public sector's share of ACT employment has fallen from 58 per cent to 47.3 per cent, and since self-government was attained the ACT Government has consciously worked to create greater private sector growth. Madam Speaker, there has been an impact of the recession on the ACT, particularly on less skilled and less experienced workers, such as young people, women, people with disabilities, and people from non-English-speaking backgrounds. It has been very much regretted. Since the onset of the recession the number of unemployed persons in Canberra has doubled from 7,900 to 15,100, and the rate has risen as well. Clearly, Mr Carleton was not interested in that because he has no compassion for this community.
Madam Speaker, I have many other errors that I could go through, and I will bring them to the attention of the producers of the program. I would like to say that we have had just about enough of this kind of nonsense, this Canberra bashing. It has, I think, reached an all time low in Mr Carleton's recent efforts. It is up to the whole community to show their irritation and their total
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .