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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3382 ..

MRS CARNELL: For the same reason that redundancy money has been available every year since self-government. Even more importantly - - -

Mr Moore: You said that you are going to create jobs at any cost.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am really happy to yell but - - -

MR SPEAKER: Order! Ms McRae has asked a question. She is entitled to hear the answer.

MRS CARNELL: I am very happy to answer. Redundancy money has been made available every year since self-government. Why has it been made available, Mr Speaker? It has been made available particularly to change the structure of the ACT Public Service. It was made available by Ms Follett for exactly the same reason. The approach Ms Follett took is very different from this Government's. This Government has moved quite significantly to a customer focus in this particular budget, as you will see from the fact that the Chief Minister's Department, my department, is the one area where there are significant cost savings. We have moved that particular money, as you can see by the budget papers, into service delivery areas such as education, Mr Moore, and other particular parts of the budget.

Mr Speaker, as you can see from some of the criticism we got this morning from some rational economists, they believe that we are spending far too much money; that we should have made significant cuts. We do not believe that that is a sensible approach at this time, but we do believe that voluntary redundancies are - - -

Mr Berry: Anything to save your own skins.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MRS CARNELL: I am happy to have soft interjections.

MR SPEAKER: I am not. I may be obliged to ask you to repeat your answer in full very shortly if this keeps up.

MRS CARNELL: Voluntary redundancy money is very important for a Public Service that is restructuring significantly, that is restructuring away from having, I suppose, a lot of middle management to a Public Service that is very service orientated. There are 270 new ACT Public Service jobs in this budget. It shows that there will be voluntary redundancies and that we are employing, as I said in my speech yesterday, in the areas where we need staff. That is just sensible management.

In fact, already our changes in the focus of the Public Service have produced a 37 per cent reduction in our senior management areas. That produced a million dollar saving. Those opposite think that is a bad thing. It is interesting that they think that is a bad thing, because that million dollars was used to supplement the enterprise bargaining agreements. That money, that saving, went straight back into workers' wages.

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