Page 2252 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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going to lose their jobs. They are going to pay for Labor’s mismanagement of their jobs. They had been misled in the lead-up to the election. They have been betrayed now. And even as they are being betrayed, the misinformation continues.
This is what Senator Lundy had to say. Senator Lundy is now Minister Lundy, part of this government. Her most significant contribution, I think, so far as Minister for Sport has been to take away an A league team from Canberra and throw money at Western Sydney. The senator for Canberra has gone and thrown millions of dollars at Western Sydney so that an A league team here did not happen. This was what she said in April on the ABC. She noted “the numbers of public servants will not reduce in the ACT”. That was what she said a month ago. One month ago she was still lying to the community about these job cuts. We have got Gai Brodtmann out there and we have got Kate Lundy out there.
Andrew Leigh had this to say when there was reporting about potential job cuts in the commonwealth public service just a couple of months ago, back in February. He said that the government had every expectation that this temporary increase in the efficiency dividend could be met without job losses. What hogwash! What a slap in the face that Labor can be so deceitful, that our local representatives, who should be standing up for Canberra families, can be so deceitful. Where is the apology from Andrew Leigh for lying to the community about job losses, about job cuts? Where is the apology? Where is the decency in going out there and saying, “I got it wrong; I said there wouldn’t be job cuts; there are thousands of job cuts”? He could tell us, maybe, what he did to try to prevent those job cuts.
We have each of the federal Labor representatives here in Canberra telling porkies to the community about their plans to cut jobs. It is an additional insult when we have a government and a party that is so deceitful that it goes to the community and claims that there will be no job cuts. It continues that ruse for months, in fact for years. Even when it is apparent that they are going to implement job cuts, they continue not to tell the truth. All those members continue not to tell the truth. Even as they cut jobs, when they do finally say they are going to slash jobs in Canberra, there are no apologies—specifically no apologies from Kate Lundy—no remorse, and, in fact, they try to spin the media a line that there are not actually job cuts happening.
We know who actually parroted the line. In fact, we then had another article later on, after Andrew Leigh had said it:
Labor’s three Canberra-based Federal parliamentarians are confident their government’s spending cuts will not lead to heavy job losses.
Who was that from?
Mr Smyth: Andrew Barr.
MR SESELJA: That was from Andrew Barr. We will get to that. Remember, it was Mr Barr who was the cheerleader for the cuts to the NCA, as was Senator Lundy. Now Senator Lundy is saying it is wonderful they are giving some money back to the NCA, as is Andrew Barr. But they were proponents of the cuts. They were cheering for the cuts.
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