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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 427 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

Just as an aside, when you are talking about staff and people you say "who", not "that". So, I will say:

Those staff [who] do not obtain employment with service providers will have access to normal redeployment and redundancy processes.

This involves two critical issues. For the first time in Canberra - this is a first for this Government - government employees, with all the public investment in their training and their experience, will be open to poaching by private sector firms, under the aegis of the Government. Those firms will then be competing for business from the public servants who previously worked with those IT staff. I believe that there is enormous potential for compromise and for conflict of interest, if I ever saw it. After this process of snatch and grab, private sector firms will then return to offer to rent the shopkeeper back the stolen goods - in this case the IT staff.

One would hope that the decision-makers who have been left behind will decide the best service available, but I cannot help wondering whether people would not prefer to retain all of the skills and experience within the public sector anyway. For those who do not wish to be privatised or who are not deemed suitable for the profit first environment, or whose skills are not readily required, the options are limited. They will "have access to normal redeployment and redundancy processes". Given that all of their jobs will have been privatised, there, in fact, will not be an option. There will be no ITO positions left in the ACT Public Service.

It is now clear why Mrs Carnell insists that the involuntary redundancy provisions of the triple R award must be able to be used in the ACT Public Service. ITOs will be sacked because their jobs have been outsourced. It is also clear that, if this proceeds, no public servant can be confident that their job is safe. All that has to happen is that the Government gets a private consultant to say - to quote from this review - that "the best way to obtain the benefits of standardisation and rationalisation of the existing environment is by implementing an outsourcing strategy". What jargon! What rubbish!

Then the Government implements this strategy for that area of public sector activity, and the people who do not get offered jobs by the private sector firms will be made redundant and sacked. I really do wonder whether this Government has any comprehension whatsoever of the role of the Public Service - that the culture, the principles and the environment are intrinsically different from those of the private sector. I am not saying that they are better or worse, but they are different. People in the public sector are motivated by a drive to serve the community, often for less than they might otherwise earn in other occupations, and the profit motive is not what motivates them.

Mr Speaker, the information technology officers in the Public Service are particularly important. They are the ones who ensure that the privacy of the public is protected in large databases, or that information held in digital form is not used against the interests of the community. I believe that future ACT governments are likely to suffer expensive

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