Page 2251 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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by Labor of those families. Many of these people who are now facing job cuts, who are now facing significant uncertainty, voted for Labor on the promise that Labor would protect their jobs.
Let us be absolutely clear about that. At the last federal election if there was one message here in the ACT from Labor, it was that you should not vote for the other mob because of commonwealth public service job cuts. And we have had federal Labor member after federal Labor member here in the ACT say that they were going to stand up for jobs. We have had member after member misleading the community, fabricating information, and I think that we are now seeing that if there is one thing that defines Labor, modern Labor, whether it is here in the ACT or whether it is federally, it is that you cannot believe a word they say. Their word is worthless.
We could harp on things like the carbon tax promise, but that is not what this motion is about. But for the people of the ACT, for the public servants who are now facing job losses, this is as significant as that. It is as significant as that. And they had been told by their federal Labor members here in Canberra that their jobs were safe. They were backed up by their local members.
Mr Barr continued the ruse. He continued the misleading information that was being delivered in relation to job cuts. I am not surprised that Mr Barr is not hanging around, because he has parroted the lies and the misleads from federal Labor on this issue.
Let us go to what each of our federal Labor members here in Canberra has had to say, even recently. We had hundreds of thousands of dollars of advertising by federal Labor: “Vote for us. We will save your job. Vote for us. We will look after your job.” Of course, many people in Canberra did, presumably partly on that promise. If Labor thought it was important enough to spend most of their advertising on it, they obviously thought that it was an important potential vote-changer and it was important for either keeping people voting Labor or getting people who had not otherwise voted Labor voting Labor. So they went out and they did that and they misled. They deceived the community.
But even after the election, even when it became apparent that they were going to betray that promise, that they were going to betray the people of the ACT, even when that became apparent, each of these federal Labor members continued to mislead the community, quite blatantly. We had the Brodtmann Bulletin. In the April Brodtmann Bulletin she said:
The people who work in the public service deserve our support. That’s why I will always defend the public service and public sector jobs here in Canberra.
What has Gai Brodtmann had to say today? Has she gone out there and said she is going to cross the floor in protest? What has been Gai Brodtmann’s protest, having said that she is going to stand up for the jobs of Canberra public servants? We have not heard much today from her.
We had Senator Lundy who, at today’s breakfast, was saying that there were no apologies in relation to this budget. I think there should be an apology. There should be an apology directly from Kate Lundy and the Labor Party to these families who are
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