Page 3514 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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We are sending little blue forms to 23,000 people without addressing the problems that exist inherently in the service. If a permanent position exists in a particular area it exists there forever. You cannot move permanent positions between sections, branches or departments. The only option is to end up with a redundancy. I think this Government's approach of suggesting that total quality management is something that we should be encouraging in the business sector is appropriate. How about a bit of total quality management in the way we organise our public service? The whole benefit of that approach is to create an environment that encourages employee participation, that builds employee involvement - - -
Mr Lamont: Spend more.
MRS CARNELL: I am very interested that Mr Lamont said, "Spend more". We know that, conservatively, total quality management produces cost savings of some 30 per cent. I know that many writers have suggested that if it were taken on board by the public sector the savings would be substantially greater than that. Would it not be more appropriate to go down a track of looking at total quality management principles - that is, employee participation, employee involvement, work satisfaction, a happier, more dynamic, more innovative workplace, a public service that actually knows where it is heading? That would be more appropriate than the Government going down the track of putting in envelopes little blue slips that say, "If you want to get out you can, because we really do not value you at all. Any of you can go. We do not mind which ones go". How can that make anybody feel part of an organisation? How can that make them feel that they are worth anything?
The Government has to target its redundancies if it wants redundancies. You have to say to the public sector, to department heads, "From the ground up, total quality management works only if you ask your employees what they think, what are the areas in which they believe savings can be made". That is the only approach that works. If the Labor Government had chosen to ask the public servants where redundancies could be found - in other words, targeted those redundancies - I am confident that today we would not have a union that is totally opposed to the Labor Government. We would not have a situation where the Industrial Relations Commission has said, "Not on, Ms Follett; not a good way to go". We would have a situation where we would have found the redundancies. But it would not have been the Government that found the redundancies; it would have been the public sector itself that had found the redundancies that were needed. As well, we would have a directional public service that was saving money - which, let us be fair, is in the best interests of everybody.
There is no doubt that unless we can have an efficient public sector we cannot have a tax structure that encourages the private sector. We are all very much intertwined in this. The public sector matters to the private sector; it certainly matters to the Liberal Party; but it does not seem to matter one bit to the Labor Party.
MADAM SPEAKER: The discussion is concluded.
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