Page 2453 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 1993
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Mrs Carnell: What about Defence?
MS FOLLETT: We do not have the details of where the remaining job losses are likely to occur, but we do know that only 17 per cent of the employees of the Department of Defence and the Taxation Office are based in the ACT. Clearly, the impacts in the ACT of those job losses may not be of major importance, but I believe that the offsets in the ACT are significant, and they include, of course, benefits in the construction industry and in the tourism industry. Madam Speaker, they include the geological survey office, a construction project of over $100m; a commitment to the National Museum; a commitment to the national portrait gallery; and the National Capital Planning Authority will be spending an additional $19.4m in this Territory. That all has an employment aspect to it.
Mrs Carnell: Like the DFAT building did. We got lots of ACT jobs out of that!
MS FOLLETT: I would advise Mrs Carnell, through you, Madam Speaker, to listen from time to time, and she might learn something.
Part of her question betrays a complete lack of understanding of the arrangements for the establishment of a separate ACT public service, and the funding that I thought was a one-off. I thought nothing could have been clearer than that, Madam Speaker. We needed funding at the stage where we were setting up the appropriate resources to draft legislation, draw up standards, and so on. We got that money in full. We did not ask for it again; we do not need it again. So it is not in the budget. Madam Speaker, I think that answers Mrs Carnell's question there.
Mrs Carnell: No, it does not. Have you spent it?
MS FOLLETT: I can understand her embarrassment, Madam Speaker, but I would urge her not to completely lose her composure. I am answering the question. On the question of jobs, I am pretty much breathless at the hypocrisy of the Liberals opposite in raising this issue. They know full well, unless their memories have deserted them completely, that their Federal leader, Dr Hewson, was planning a total slash and burn approach to the ACT.
Opposition members interjected.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order!
MS FOLLETT: I knew that it would hurt. Madam Speaker, it is a fact that the totally discredited then shadow Treasurer, Mr Reith, adopted a policy in relation to the ACT of reducing it to a ghost town. He said that. They know that. Madam Speaker, under a Hewson Federal government - perish the thought - we would have seen the wholesale removal of departments from this Territory, and they know it. It is a fact that in the past year this Territory has had some 7,000 new jobs created. Those jobs have been in the private sector, Madam Speaker, not in the public sector. The public sector, as I have said, has been contracting for some time. Whilst I regret those job losses, I would say to members opposite that the private sector job growth has been very good in this Territory, and I think it is unreasonable of us not to expect the Commonwealth to undertake its operations in the most efficient and the most lean manner possible. I suspect that that is what we are seeing here.
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