Page 3430 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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they are putting here today, because under the Liberals’ policy not one person in Canberra will lose their job. And that is what is on the record.
Gary Humphries, senator for the ACT, will make sure that that occurs when, hopefully, we see an Abbott Liberal government elected that will once again restore credibility to the public service and that will once again restore our books to the black after this mismanagement and reckless spending of a federal Labor government. (Time expired.)
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.06): Let me start off, because there is not a whole lot of time left, by simply taking the opportunity to make clear on the record exactly where Ms Hunter has gone, because, as he so often does, Mr Hanson has gone straight into the personal insults rather than bothering to actually debate the substance of the matter. As it happens, Ms Hunter is off receiving a briefing on the bridge collapse this week. The available time was 4.30 and, of course, unlike the Liberal Party, we actually take a briefing so that we can find out what is going on. I think the important part of this debate is to focus on the subject matter that Ms Hunter brought forward, and that simply is the impact on Canberra, the impact on the ACT economy, and the impact on people who live in Canberra.
If we want to talk about family-friendly policies, let us just think about what happens if you freeze the public service for two years. That means not one graduate will get into the public service. That means that children in this town who are finishing university, who want a job in this town and who would like to stay here will have to leave Canberra potentially to find employment, because the Liberal Party will have frozen new jobs in the public service. There will be no employment opportunities in this town for those bright young people, some of the most talented young people coming out of our tertiary education system.
Mr Hanson: There will be a net decrease. It does not say there will be no new graduates.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, do you want to be named?
MR RATTENBURY: Some of those bright young people coming out of our tertiary education system will not have the opportunity to regenerate the public service, to bring in the brightest new graduates. That is the sort of impact that this policy will have on the ACT and on the families of the ACT.
There are a number of other concerns. Ms Hunter outlined them. The impact on services is one. These public service departments deliver services that everybody in Australia relies on.
There will be the impact on the rest of the ACT economy, the small businesses, because we know—and Ms Gallagher, I think, has particularly outlined—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time for this discussion has expired.
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