Page 5889 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 7 December 2011
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While I do not expect support for my amendment, I would encourage everyone to consider the options that the federal Greens have proposed, as I am confident that they are far and away the better option both for the Canberra community and also for the Australian community.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Territory and Municipal Services) (6.39): I welcome the opportunity to speak to this motion today. As the Deputy Chief Minister outlined earlier, the government are not in a position to support a motion that is factually incorrect, and that does put us in a position where we will not be able to support the motion. Listening to Mr Smyth talk about and explain his view that they will sack up to 3,000 commonwealth public servants and use—
Mr Smyth: Nadine Flood.
MS GALLAGHER: Nadine Flood’s press release, which is all I have seen available, says, I think, up to 3,000 jobs, without any evidence to back that up. But that is a figure that I have, from my reading of her comments that she has used nationally. So I think what the Canberra Liberals are trying to say here is that 3,000 jobs would go from the ACT.
Indeed, Mr Seselja in his extraordinary performance—I have not seen him quite as excited for a long time; I had to look over my shoulder to see whether there was a WIN TV camera in here, because we usually only see that sort of performance when there is a camera around—said that Andrew Barr had lied or told porkies, I think it was, when he was talking about the analysis that the government has used. It is based on the limited information that we can take from the MYEFO documents at this point in time, an estimate from the ACT Treasury that potentially 300 jobs could be lost in the public sector here in the ACT, and is based on some of the assumptions that the ACT Treasury has made about a voluntary redundancy process. But I do not think any of us in this place are in a position to come in here and say a certain amount of jobs are going to be lost from the ACT and refer to the subsequent impact that those job losses, which are at this point in time undetermined, if there are going to be any, will have on Canberra families.
Indeed, my comments and the comments of the Deputy Chief Minister—and I think there are stories online of the Deputy Chief Minister’s comments in relation to some of the savings measures that have been included in the MYEFO update from the commonwealth—have been that we think they are regrettable. Indeed, I said that very clearly on 2CC, from memory. I think it was on air. I was in the studio when we talked about the cuts, that any cuts to the public sector here are regrettable. I think they are my statements.
Indeed, I have taken the opportunity to raise my concerns in person, only in a short, informal way, during the Labor Party conference on the weekend but I had also written to the Prime Minister and the federal Treasurer. Indeed, I had followed that up last week with a call to the Prime Minister’s office seeking a meeting about the savings that they had outlined in the MYEFO, to get a better understanding of what
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