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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (16 April) . . Page.. 938 ..

MR WHITECROSS: Mr Speaker, even Mr Humphries's own colleague, Mr Kaine, seems to think that 7,000 jobs are up for grabs in Canberra; so I think it is a bit lame for Mr Humphries to be now making a fuss about where these figures came from. His colleagues have produced these figures. His own Deputy Prime Minister has said that 20,000 fewer public servants would not be too many. Let us not have any messing around on the part of the Government here that there is going to be - - -

Mr De Domenico: We do not believe you, Andrew.

MR WHITECROSS: Mr De Domenico is the only person in the entire ACT who does not believe that the Howard Government is serious about reducing the size of the Public Service. What I am saying is that this will result in a serious economic problem for the ACT.

Mrs Carnell tries to say that it is not as bad as it seems. She says that 85 per cent of public servants are outside the ACT, so even though the Howard Government is going to sack all these people it probably will not affect Canberra. This shows Mrs Carnell's ignorance of how public sector job cuts work. The Federal Government's own rhetoric is attacking duplication. Mr Kennett in Victoria has a better understanding than Mrs Carnell of how this is going to work. They are going to attack areas of so-called duplication, such as health and education. Where do the people in the Department of Health and the Department of Education work? They work here in the ACT. They do not work in the States; they work here in the ACT. The reality is that at least half of these job cuts will be based in the ACT. That is the consistent experience of these sorts of things, and Mrs Carnell is only fooling herself if she thinks anything different.

On top of the announced job cuts, we have seen Mr Howard also undertake to reduce expenditure on information technology by $1 billion - $300m a year. That is going to be a significant cut to the operation of the public sector. That is a significant cut to business for Canberra firms in this Territory who service public sector departments. Mrs Carnell hides behind saying, "We do not know; let us wait and see. It will be all right in the long run. Who knows what is going to be the effect?". The Howard Government wants to cut $1 billion from IT, they want to cut thousands and thousands of jobs, and Mrs Carnell's response is not that we have to have a plan but, "Who knows? Let us wait and see".

The problems created for the ACT economy by the Howard Government's attack on the public sector are compounded by Mrs Carnell's approach. Since Mrs Carnell came to government she has allocated $12m for voluntary redundancies, which she is going ahead with at a time when the ACT economy is far from being in a great situation. She has put a job freeze on, which means no more recruitment, which means further job losses through natural attrition. We have a situation here where the Howard Liberal Government is attacking job prospects in the ACT in the public sector; we have the ACT Government reducing its commitment to providing employment in the ACT. At a time when the Canberra economy is a problem, this is the record of Liberal governments, this is the promise of Liberal governments for the future: Fewer and fewer jobs in the ACT.

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