Page 3778 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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If Mr Rudd is elected on Saturday, guess what he has promised to do? He is going to slash the public service. I will talk more about that later, because he might not do so. He will say that he will, in order to seem to be a tough guy, but then there will be a reason why he cannot, and I will explain that later.
Mr Rudd is a danger to the entire economy of Australia, but particularly to the ACT. He is on record as offering the prospect of 81 new bureaucracies and 119 reviews. What he offers the ACT is an expensive nightmare. So to come back to where I started, we will see either empty, shallow words from Mr Rudd that never come to pass or he will carry out his threat, only to then re-recruit the public servants to head up the new bureaucracies. Essentially, the federal public service is Canberra’s lifeblood. Canberra is the home of the federal public service. Whilst there has been something of a balance between public servants as an industry and the business sector, we still know Canberra to be the home of the federal public service. What will his enthusiasm for cutting the public service mean to Canberra? Let us have a look.
Currently, the ACT receives considerable funds for health under the commonwealth-state health agreement. What will a significantly reduced population, due to a Labor policy of transferring public servants away from Canberra, do to our hospital funding? What will this do to commonwealth funding for our entire health system? This is on top of cuts to health funding for two programs worth almost $200 million. That is right: it has been revealed that the Australian Labor Party would cut two important health programs worth almost $200 million if it is elected on the weekend. In submitting costings to the department of finance, Labor has revealed it will cut Medicare eligibility for 13 MRI units and a program to train 500 extra enrolled nurses a year. How sneaky is that?
On the other hand, the Liberal federal government has recently extended eligibility for the health care card for former carer allowance (child) recipients. Twenty-five thousand students are now able to access a health care card due to changes that came into effect from October. The move will help full-time students with a disability or medical condition and their families to manage their ongoing medical costs. Previously, many of these students were not eligible for health care cards. The initiative is worth $19.3 million over four years and provides pharmaceutical benefits scheme prescription items and certain Medicare services at a cheaper rate.
Despite billions being provided by the federal government to the states for housing, there were fewer public houses available in 2004-05 than in 1996-97. I have a chart here which clearly shows this, and it refutes the argument that the housing minister, Mr Hargreaves, and the Chief Minister keep putting up here. Let us read through it. In 1996-97 in the ACT there were 12,052 properties. In 1997-98 there were 11,947 properties, in 1998-99 there were 11,959 properties and in 1999-2000 there were 12,070.
Here comes the downfall; here comes the mis-spending of federal government funds: what did we get? Not better service but less. What happened? In 2000-01 there were 11,913 properties, in 2001-02 it went down to 11,588, in 2002-03 it went down to
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