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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (16 April) . . Page.. 945 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

That is no longer true, as Mr Kaine properly pointed out in his comments, which were reported in the Canberra Times. Mr Kaine said that any big loss of jobs would have a depressing impact on Canberra. So true! Mr Howard, of course, intends to do that. Mr Kaine said that it is going to be about 7,000.

Mrs Carnell: He did not say that. He said "if it was".

MR BERRY: I can see much tightening of the belt in the ACT if it is going to be about 7,000. It is fairly obvious that the Deputy Prime Minister intends that 20,000 across Australia would be acceptable. On calculations I have seen, that stands for about 7,000 in the ACT, in addition to those that Mrs Carnell had intended to cut.

The impact becomes pretty savage, because you then have to add to that the multiplier effect of what would occur in the private sector. If the unemployed in the public sector and in the private sector were to stay in town, you would get a situation where our unemployment rate would spiral massively higher. We know that those people would not stay in the ACT; they would leave town. What would that do for us? As they left town, it would lower our unemployment rate but it would leave empty houses, empty car parks, empty service stations, shopping centres with fewer people shopping in them, and trade generally in decline. There is a crisis in the offing here; there is no question about that.

Mrs Carnell made great play of the argument that the Keating and Hawke Labor governments had slashed many jobs from the public sector. In fact, the Bureau of Statistics points out that over the period between 1983 and 1994 there were 14,800 more jobs in the Commonwealth public sector, including in the ACT. Mrs Carnell ought to have a look at the figures. This is 14,000 more jobs in the ACT. So let us not have any of the big ones; let us stick to the facts.

Mr De Domenico: Table your source.

MR BERRY: The Bureau of Statistics. Go and ask them yourself.

Mr De Domenico: No, table it. We tabled ours. You table yours.

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, I will supply you with a copy after the sitting.

MR SPEAKER: Thank you.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell tries to avoid the rhetoric, which has been going on for some time. She is back to her old tricks. Just think back a little way. Do you remember the attacks on the so-called clipboard nurses and the bureaucrats? "When are you going to get rid of the management people and the clipboard nurses?", she said. They are all still there; but Mrs Carnell, continuing with that old rhetoric, goes on with a populist attack on public servants. Just keep kicking the dog; that is Mrs Carnell's and John Howard's approach. It is an ideological position they cannot shake. They just cannot help themselves. Mrs Carnell, in particular, has given us 12 months of stagnation in the job sector here in the ACT. Have a look at the figures.

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