Page 3500 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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GOVERNMENT SERVICE - VOLUNTARY SEPARATION SCHEME
Discussion of Matter of
Public Importance
MADAM SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Mr De Domenico proposing that a matter of public importance be submitted to the Assembly for discussion, namely:
The ACT Government's failure to properly target its recently announced $17m voluntary separation scheme.
MR DE DOMENICO (3.15): Madam Speaker, the voluntary separation scheme is a forerunner to the more major task of separation of the whole ACT Government Service from the apron-strings of the Commonwealth. As such, the Government's handling of the voluntary separation scheme is a foretaste of what is to come. As usual, Madam Speaker, the Government is making a mess of this major and important undertaking. On Thursday, 30 September, the Chief Minister said in the Estimates Committee:
Madam Chair, indeed, the voluntary separation scheme as spelt out in the budget stands.
On Tuesday, 5 October, just days later, the Industrial Relations Commission said that the Government's global approach to the redundancies was inconsistent with the proper application of the framework pay and productivity agreement between unions and the Government and that the current scheme as it stood should cease.
Madam Speaker, the Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Berry, was quoted in the Canberra Times on 7 October as saying that a new process in which the Government would identify areas for redundancies would now be developed. And as a master of the understatement he said that the decision of the Industrial Relations Commission was a "minor setback". As seen from question time today, the Government has been so far unable or unwilling to target redundancies or, as they have now been euphemistically tagged, separations. To target separations the Government must make decisions using vision, how it sees the future. The fact is that the Follett Government does not have an idea on how to approach this issue. It lacks the vision and perhaps, I suggest, the spine.
This Government's liaison with the unions is a relationship which has become an impediment to good government. The community knows it, but the Government is blind to the serious implications of this dangerous liaison. The implications lie in the future well-being of this community. Bad decisions now regarding the public service will affect everybody in every area of community life. Yet still the Government is unable to take the bull by the horns. On 16 September the Liberal leader, Kate Carnell, responded to the Government's budget in the Assembly. She said that the redundancies should be targeted. Perhaps it is worth while quoting what Mrs Carnell had to say. She said:
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