Page 3458 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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to Epping, the $2.1 billion for the rail line from Parramatta to Epping? How does one suggest that the $43 billion-plus national broadband network will be paid for? Julia Gillard has promised that they will bring the budget back in surplus.
They are spending money in marginal seats—$2 billion for one marginal seat. They are prepared to spend $2 billion to get Maxine McKew re-elected in Bennelong. How badly must she have performed? How badly must Maxine have performed for them to feel that they need a $2.1 billion bribe?
The ACT is not getting that kind of largesse. But you can guarantee that we will be paying for it because if they are going to spend $2.1 billion for Maxine McKew’s re-election in Bennelong, if they are going to spend more than $43 billion—and we know it will be much more than $43 billion—for a national broadband network, and they plan to get the budget back into surplus, they will start cutting the public service. There is no doubt about it.
Only one party has been honest and said: “We will make savings. We will make savings because Labor has racked up so much debt that we have no choice but to make savings, but we are going to do it without cutting jobs. We are going to do it through natural attrition.” I will come back to the original lie that has been perpetuated, which is that the 12,000 jobs will be in Canberra. It is simply not true. And Ms Porter seemed to acknowledge it towards the end of her speech. We are talking about 12,000, through natural attrition, over two years, across the commonwealth, right around the nation. About 30 per cent of public service jobs are in Canberra. So we are talking about a far smaller number.
But the reality is that, whilst there will be savings made by a coalition government through a few thousand, through natural attrition, in the territory—they have been honest about that—we guarantee you this: when you are spending $2.1 billion just for one marginal seat bribe, when you are spending more than $40 billion on a broadband network, when you have got billions in other promises and you have promised to bring the budget back into surplus, the Labor Party will sack public servants. And that has been their record.
We only have to look at what they did when the budget was in surplus. In this last term they inherited a massive surplus; yet we still saw them sacking public servants. And we saw the cheerleaders from the Labor Party in the ACT. When they sacked people from the NCA, who was cheering the loudest? The chief cheerleaders. We had Senator Kate Lundy, we had Andrew Barr, we had the Chief Minister cheering the loudest. They were cheering for the job cuts. This was not natural attrition. These were sackings. These were sackings done in good fiscal times. They had inherited a $20 billion surplus and they still felt the need to sack public servants. That is their record.
So what are they going to do if they come back in, with the massive deficit that they have racked up, with the extra election bribes to get Maxine McKew and others re-elected? It is interesting that we have not seen anything like that in the ACT. I wonder what Gai Brodtmann would have to say about the fact that Maxine McKew gets a $2.1 billion rail link. But of course it may never be delivered. But it is
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