Page 3501 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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Where does Ms Follett really intend to make these cuts? Will it be teachers -
we know that, yes, some 80 teachers are to be chopped -
nurses -
and we know what the nurses think of the Government -
bus drivers? Where will they be? It is clearly a case of dodge, duck and deceive. Fancy telling the community, as Ms Follett has done, that the redundancy packages have been set aside for people who want to "welcome the opportunity to change their career". What a gutless euphemism! Why does she not just say what she means? Why does she not say that the reason she has not targeted the redundancies is that that would require a decision to be made?
That is what Mrs Carnell said, and how right she was. Mrs Carnell hit the nail on the head three weeks ahead of the good commissioner and long before the Government awoke to the fact that these redundancies had not been targeted, and this is the reason for the foul stink which has now been raised by the unions and supported just last week by the Industrial Relations Commission.
Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, despite the symbolic relationship between the unions and the Government, the Follett Government has failed on every issue regarding the implementation of the voluntary separation scheme. The Follett Government has failed to consult. The Follett Government failed to realise that its program did not even fit in with the framework arrangements it set in place itself. Finally, the whole thing has been thrown out by the Industrial Relations Commission. So the Government has failed yet again. The Government has failed to develop a strategy to deal in a meaningful and ordered way with the reduction of the public service. It has failed, failed, failed.
Let us see where it has failed. It has failed to consult. In the Estimates Committee I questioned the Chief Minister about consultation, and she lovingly waxed lyrical on the amount of consultation undertaken by the Government prior to the budget. She said that she had received two very detailed submissions from the Trades and Labour Council and in the same breath assured me that, of course, the Trades and Labour Council was never, never, never informed of any details of the budget. This is consultation. You are asked to comment on a budget of which you are given no particular details, but consultation is carried out regardless. The Government consulted with the community, saying, "We cannot tell you anything about this budget, but we would like to know what you think about it anyway". In a twisted version of The Emperor's New Clothes, the community was consulted on something it could not see - a useful operation, I am sure!
Where else has the Government failed? I am suggesting that the Follett Government failed to realise that its program did not even fit in with the framework arrangements it set in place itself. I ask you whether anyone can trust that this Government knows what it is doing. It puts a framework agreement in place, and then hands down a $17m initiative that does not abide by the agreement. Is it any wonder that 23,000-odd public servants tremble at the thought that the Follett Government will be at the helm engineering the separation of the ACT Government Service from the Commonwealth, when it
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