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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 1 Hansard (13 February) . . Page.. 75 ..
MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):
Let me respond to a few of the specifics that were raised in this debate. Mr Berry found reason to avoid talking about most of the issues that were mentioned in the statement, and he went on to basically other issues. He avoided what was in the statement but again make reference the size of the public service-to the fact, he says, that the public service is shrinking. I will say two things about that. First of all, yes, you are right. I am not denying it Mr Berry-it has been shrinking. It has been the government's policy to shrink the public service.
Let me make two observations about that. First of all, Mr Quinlan got up in front of the cameras today and, when talking the budget surplus, said, "The budget surplus hasn't been due to anything the government's done. It has been an accident. It has been a conspiracy of external factors which have delivered this surplus to you." So, Mr Deputy Speaker, we have been shrinking the public service, which Mr Berry tells us about today, but Mr Quinlan says that has got nothing to do with the fact that the government's budget bottom line is improving. Is there a slight inconsistency with those two statements? I would suggest that there is.
Mr Quinlan: What about the $80 million Commonwealth funding?
MR HUMPHRIES: Sure, we have had some windfalls and so did you when you were last in office. But the fact is that we have had to make up a lot of money. Let us quote the figure again, shall we-$344 million, as indicated by the Auditor-General on the public record. That is a large amount of money. Windfalls of $80 million from the Commonwealth Grants Commission do not make the difference between $344 million and nothing.
Yes, we have been shrinking the public service. But can I remind those opposite that that was exactly their plan in government as well and, indeed, I think a plan that they actually executed. The public service, as I recall the figures, was smaller when you left office in 1995 than when you entered it in 1991. It was smaller.
Mr Berry: Not by much.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Berry says, sotto voce, "Not by much." Well, indeed that is true. It was not as dramatically smaller than he would have liked because the opposition, when in government, invested very large amounts of money in public service redundancies. In fact, I think it was the 1992 budget which brought forward a budget item of $17 million for public service redundancies. The gall of standing up here and criticising us for shrinking the public service, when you put 17 million bucks in a single year into knocking off public servants, is just a tad rich.
Mr Quinlan: But yours is on top of that.
MR HUMPHRIES
: Oh, I see. So your cuts to the public service were okay? They were kind cuts; they were sort of slimming cuts; they were made to reduce a fat public service to a well-built medium public service; and our cuts have made the public service skinny and emaciated? Is that the line that you are running, Mr Quinlan? Well, I am sorry, it does not wash. You were as concerned to cut public service numbers as we have been for the very same reason, that the ACT simply had to have a capacity to
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