Page 3462 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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Mr Hanson: Incompetence, political thuggery, bias.
MR STANHOPE: There were nine of us, I understand, that actually were overlooked in the then claim—the sorts of claims similar to those being made now—“It will just be natural attrition. There will be no forced redundancies.” In fact, there were a few.
Mr Hanson: Maybe they saw special characteristics. You’re unique.
MR STANHOPE: I think it was just that I was far too successful in my role as chief of staff to a very successful Labor minister and—
Mr Hanson: Why did you get dumped then? If you were so successful, why did you get kicked out?
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Hanson!
Mr Seselja: Why was that?
MR STANHOPE: Well, I think the question for today is: why was Brendan Smyth, the then member for Canberra, the only sitting member of the Liberal Party of Australia to lose his seat in the 1996 election? It was because he was the sitting member, the person that the people of Canberra looked to to stand up for them in the face of a very deliberate promise by his then leader to do precisely what Tony Abbott has now promised to repeat—to slash and burn the commonwealth public service, to affect jobs in Canberra, to affect the economy, to send the ACT into recession, to reduce the price of houses, and to force people to leave the territory in search of work and another life.
Brendan Smyth was a part of that decision in 1996, and the people of Canberra looked at his role and his complicity and his weakness and his refusal to stand up for them. The people of Canberra today need to have exactly the same view of and regard for the current member of the Liberal Party in the party room. As Mr Smyth was in 1996, Gary Humphries, in 2010, was the member of the Liberal Party in the party room at the time when Tony Abbott decided to put the cleaners through 12,000 jobs. Who was there as part of that decision that will create a $24 million reduction in expenditure, enormous damage to our economy and a massive impact on jobs? Senator Gary Humphries, senator for the ACT. Gary Humphries is a part of a decision in relation to a fundamental promise being made by Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party to slash ACT levels of employment with, of course, the resultant effect and impact that it will have on this economy—on jobs, on families, on the standard and quality of living and life here in the ACT.
We cannot overstate just how important the commonwealth public service sector is to the ACT economy, but we often do. The commonwealth public service accounts for just around half of all employment in the ACT. That is how significant it is, and that is just how damaging this decision by the Liberal Party will be. Importantly, it is not just half of employment levels in the ACT; it is also half of our state final demand.
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