Page 2253 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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What a dishonest statement we had from Andrew Barr. He was parroting the lines given to him by his federal colleagues. Penny Wong says to Andrew Barr, “You just go and deliver the line, Andrew, and here’s the line: territory Treasurer Andrew Barr says he is more worried about public sector job losses on Canberra than on direct hits.” And when the Canberra Liberals were warning of thousands of job cuts, Mr Barr said his officials believed that any job losses would be much less dramatic, with perhaps 300 positions to be lost nationally. This was what he said about these job cuts.
Are we really to believe that he did not know? Did he ask? Did he actually try to get to the bottom of it or did he just go to his federal Labor colleagues and say: “There are rumours about job cuts. Can you give me the line? And the line is, ‘It’s only going to be 300 nationally.’ That is only about 100 in Canberra”? That is nothing, according to federal Labor. And Andrew Barr parroted that.
People in Canberra, as they face this betrayal, can be accused of being a little sceptical of what Labor tells them, because Labor has shown itself now right around the nation—whether it is at a state level, a territory level or the federal level—to be unable to tell the truth, to be unable to tell the truth habitually—not just occasionally, habitually—misleading the community time and again, with no regard for the impact of that.
Of course, we know that this betrayal has a real impact. We can go through it. It can be played down by Labor, but these are real people who are going to lose their jobs. This is just in one year. There are going to be job losses next year and the year after. We see in Attorney-General’s, 350; in Broadband and Communications, 22; in Defence, 674 civilians; in Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 1,255; in Human Services, 440; in Prime Minister and Cabinet, 219. We see hundreds of jobs are to go in the ABS. We see in the Australian Taxation Office, 1,000 jobs. These are real people. And they have been lied to.
I think that when next we hear the Labor Party—whether it is at an election, particularly in the lead-up to an election, but at any time—saying they are going to do X—“Trust us, we’ll look after you; that other mob, they’ll come in and slash”—people should remember how dishonest Labor has been at every turn on this. That makes the betrayal all the greater. Even as they are cutting people’s jobs, even as they are taking away their livelihoods to pay for their wasteful spending, they are not telling the truth about it. A month before, Kate Lundy was not telling the truth about it. Even as it is happening now, she is trying to rewrite the numbers. The 12,000 job cuts that are going to be faced by the commonwealth public service under federal Labor is a betrayal.
Ms Gallagher got up and said 12,000 would be disastrous, but only if it was the Liberal Party doing the cutting. Whoever is cutting the jobs, it hurts in Canberra. When you cut the public service in the way that Labor is going to do in this budget, is going to do next year, is going to do the year after, it will hurt. It does not matter who is doing it. And instead of just falling into line with their federal colleagues, instead of parroting the dishonest statements that have been made by their federal colleagues, as Andrew Barr did, what we should have is a statement of principle: “We support our
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