Page 3799 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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I will go to Mr Seselja’s amendments. It is rather unfortunate that the first time I saw these amendments was when they were circulated just before. In some ways that shows how serious Mr Seselja was about getting support for these amendments. If he was actually serious about it, he would have ensured that I and my colleagues had the opportunity to look at these amendments beforehand. I do not think he was serious; I think this is all part of the game here.
If we had had that opportunity to sit down, I think that there are some points in these amendments that we would have been quite sympathetic to. That is around the cuts to the national institutions. We know that many of them have been finding it tough to do their job. They have had to shed jobs. Some of them have had assistance. We have seen the assistance for the War Memorial that happened recently. That was put forward. But we know that other national institutions that are struggling and doing it just as tough have not been provided with that assistance. I am sure we would have been able to find a bit of common ground on that one. It is just unfortunate, as I said, that we were not able to spend that time to have a bit of a talk about it.
We certainly do not see that this is just an issue around the opposition. We think that we would speak out against anybody who comes out and talks about massive job cuts or who is not supporting ongoing employment in important places such as national institutions. I have certainly taken up the issue around what was previously mooted as the slashing of jobs in the ACT by the Liberal opposition. We did not hear about it for a while, and now it has come back onto the agenda with full force.
It is unfortunate. I think it is a part of the Canberra bashing that goes on. It is unfortunate that Mr Seselja is not able to persuade his colleague Mr Abbott that this is Canberra bashing. This sort of massive slashing of positions and employment in the ACT will have a detrimental effect—far more than we have seen so far with the GFC. We only need to look back to what did happen in 1996. It is unfortunate that Mr Seselja is not able to persuade Tony Abbott of the outcome.
What is even more disappointing is the role of Senator Humphries in all of this. Where is Senator Humphries? He should be up there. His main job at the moment should be persuading his leader that this plan is a dud. This plan needs to be taken off the table and needs to be rethought. The ACT simply could not absorb that number of job losses without a significant impact. It would put the talk in this place about cost of living into the shade. It would not even touch it, Mr Smyth.
This is a very serious matter. You want to talk about cost of living. Yesterday you were saying, “It is really terrible what is happening with the cost of living. I am very concerned. I am getting feedback from people who used to be able to go out to dinner and who used to be able to order the bottle of wine they wanted and now they have to order the house wine. They used to be able to order three courses and now they are only able to order two.” I am sorry, Mr Smyth, but that situation has got nothing on what will happen to many families across the ACT if Mr Abbott gets into power and goes ahead and slashes that many jobs from the workforce in the ACT.
As I said, it is a little unfortunate that Mr Seselja did not talk to us, because the national institutions are something that we are very concerned about. We do think
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