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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (16 April) . . Page.. 944 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Let us talk about what we have done, because we heard Mr Whitecross make some pretty unusual comments. In this year's budget, we set aside $12m for voluntary redundancies. I am advised that less than $2m has been spent from the redundancy pool, and that equates to fewer than 100 people. I certainly hope that some more ACT public servants choose to take voluntary redundancies, but at this stage $2m has actually been spent from the redundancy pool in respect of 100 people. That sounds like a real crisis to me: 1,019 redundancies in the previous three years under Ms Follett, and at this stage of the financial year less than $2m has been spent out of the redundancy pool. In other words, we are now being condemned, I suspect, for doing on a smaller scale the same things the accusers opposite, the Labor Party, did themselves; but, again, we are doing it on a much smaller scale. Rather than cutting government jobs for the sake of it, we are approaching change in a rational and structured way, asking the necessary and sometimes hard questions about the future and form of some government functions. The change agenda for this Government is aimed at strengthening the leadership and intellectual rigour of our service, introducing real customer understanding and commitment, and ensuring that community services are delivered in an affordable and effective way. We are at the leading edge of reform, with accrual budgeting, purchaser-provider divisions, contestability and so on.

The reality here is that those opposite are simply hypocrites. They are very happy to hop up in this place with figures that they cannot source, with quotes that they do not quite know who made - and what have they done about it? Where was the one comment in Mr Whitecross's statement that said what they would have done? We know what they would have done. They would have done what they did in the past, and that was offer redundancy payments to ACT Government public servants, but not necessarily address the cost problems we have in the ACT Government, and certainly not address the fundamental structural problems we have - all of those sorts of things. Did they address the issue of a government town with a single major employer, the APS, when 18,000 redundancies were offered over the previous seven years? No, they did not, Mr Speaker. I think that is really what it comes down to here.

As an Assembly, rather than standing here wasting taxpayers' money and time by supposedly throwing insults, we should be looking at ways to improve and increase private sector job opportunities in this city to ensure that there are futures for our children, to ensure that there are opportunities for Federal public servants who may accept redundancies. We also have to be out there fighting for Canberra, ensuring that the Federal Government, whether it be a Labor Party, Liberal Party or coalition government - whoever they are - realise that Canberra is the national capital, that Canberra does matter, and that any reductions in jobs need to be shared over the whole of this country. It is ridiculous for Mr Whitecross to suggest that somehow all we should do, whether it be federally or locally, is employ more people with money we simply do not have.

MR BERRY (4.20): Mr Speaker, that was a rather feeble attempt at a disarming speech. The facts of this matter are that in the ACT we have been faced with a mountain of rhetoric before both the ACT election and the Federal election. Who will forget Mrs Carnell's promise to cut $30m out of the health budget? She is about $44m out on that score. And where was it going to come from? It was going to come from jobs, of course. Mr Howard claimed that he would stick to 2,500 jobs by natural attrition.

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