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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2222 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

Sometimes the level of hypocrisy in this place is a little hard to handle. From memory, under Ms Follett, something like $31 million was spent on voluntary redundancies. What does Mr Berry think they were for? Were they for maintaining people in the public service or for giving people voluntary redundancies?

That is exactly what has happened under this government. The difference is that at the same time this government has been working very hard to encourage the private sector and to increase the number of jobs available in the private sector so that those people who have been given voluntary redundancies from the ACT public service are able to pick up jobs elsewhere, and it has worked. There are 13,000 more jobs in Canberra now than when we came to government. The federal government downsized by some 7,000 and the ACT by some 2,800. On top of creating 9,800 equivalent jobs we have created an additional 13,000. There is a significantly greater number of jobs now.

Mr Berry mentioned industrial issues. He has not looked at his figures lately. On the last set of figures I saw, the ACT had the lowest level of industrial disputation in Australia. That does not indicate industrial turmoil as Mr Berry was trying to say. We have managed to reach EBAs with just about everybody-there is a small group left-with very little industrial disputation. With the teachers, there was none. Compare that to New South Wales, a Labor state, where a huge amount of time was lost, with a huge amount of disruption for children and for parents. I do not think what Mr Berry says stacks up.

Mr Corbell mentioned e-services and an integrated approach. That is exactly the reason that e-services have been driven from within the Chief Minister's Department-to get an integrated approach. There will be some significant announcements in the very near future with regard to the approach we will take in spending the $18 million to ensure that there is an integrated approach focused in the Chief Minister's Department.

Mr Corbell also mentioned a digital divide. I agree that that is a very real issue for all governments. That is the reason that in the ACT we have ensured that all teachers have Pentium computers. Other states are talking about it but have not achieved it yet. We have made money available to schools to ensure that the number of computers per student is the best in Australia. We have put computers into libraries. We have 22 Austouch terminals in the community. The Council on the Ageing has computers and training. I agree with Mr Corbell that it is essential that computers be made available and accessible to all members of the community. We will certainly be working very hard to achieve that in the future.

Yesterday a Yellow Pages survey revealed that small to medium-sized businesses in Canberra had a much higher rate of desktop computer usage, Internet connection, e-mail usage, home page presence and electronic transactions than the national average. In four out of six categories, ACT companies were ahead of those in other states and territories and second in the other two categories.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The Chief Minister's time has expired.

MS CARNELL: I seek a very short extension.

Mr Corbell: You should have just taken your second 10 minutes.

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