Page 3797 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (4.34): I think every Canberran has every reason to be very worried about the federal opposition policy to cut 12,000 public service jobs. It is one of very few policies, it seems. Nevertheless, one more than the local Liberals seem to be putting out there. The opposition Treasury spokesman said on Q&A:
For a start, 12,000 public servants in Canberra will be made redundant over a two-year period immediately upon us being elected.
This was subsequently confirmed by Senator Gary Humphries—this is the senator who stands up for Canberra—on ABC radio the following day.
How this is in the best interests of Canberra I cannot for the life of me work out. However, the fact that the Liberal Party has adopted this position is not surprising, particularly given its recent position opposing amendments to the self-government act to give the territory parliament, and therefore the citizens of the ACT, the same democratic rights as those democratic rights that people in other states enjoy. Again, that was Senator Gary Humphries not standing up for Canberra.
They do genuinely appear to think less of this place than they do of every other parliament across the country. This is a great shame for the territory—that the local opposition, which is supposed to be the alternative government, does not believe that the democratically elected government, irrespective of the party it happens to be, is actually capable of representing the people of Canberra.
Given that this is the case, I do not think we should be surprised that our local Liberals are not prepared to stand up for Canberra and say that they disagree with the policy of sacking 12,000 Canberrans, although I note that Mr Seselja has said that he has said to Mr Abbott that he does not like this policy. But we do not seem to be having any movement at the federal level, so we are still seeing a policy by the federal Liberal Party that is talking about sacking 12,000 public servants and we still do not know from that conversation how many of those people live in Canberra. Therefore we do not know what resulting harm those sackings will have on the rest of Canberra. That is those who will lose their jobs. That is the families who will be impacted. And then it will obviously impact on their ability to be able to keep a roof over their head, to keep their children clothed. These are all cost of living issues as well, because of the impact that will then ripple on to all of the businesses in the ACT.
The Canberra Liberals talk about diversifying the economy. We are not going to be able to continue on the path of diversifying the economy if we are going to cut wages from 12,000 people. That will send this place into a recession. Who is it going to hit first? It is going to hit small business first. And what is one of the biggest areas where we can diversify the economy? It is in that area of small business. We know that the biggest business sector in the ACT is small business. That would certainly put aside and totally undermine plans about continuing to diversify the economy.
I think everyone in Canberra understands that it is not just those who stand to directly lose their jobs who will suffer; the broader economic impact will be enormous.
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