Page 2263 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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I was pleased to hear the productive initiatives that the Chief Minister put forward at this morning’s chamber of commerce breakfast. It is certainly a good thing that we can all agree that we need to do everything we can to protect public service jobs and that we can all basically condemn and work towards ending Canberra bashing in a way by both the federal Labor and federal Liberal parties that have both been talking about job cuts.
Again, I do have to say that it is odd that we do have this motion brought on by the Liberal Party in the sense that it is concerning when we are facing a federal election next year to still have Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott out there talking about how they will increase these job cuts. What we have heard last night in the federal budget is bad enough. We do not want to see 20,000 jobs lost in this town. We know the impact it will have. We know what happened with the massive job cuts under John Howard, when suddenly the place went into recession, house prices fell dramatically, unemployment rose. We cannot see that happen again.
Therefore I would be urging the Canberra Liberals to be talking to Joe Hockey, to be talking to Tony Abbott, to explain that if they are to win government next year—let us face it; at the moment the polls are certainly looking that way—it would be an absolute disaster for this city to have that number of job cuts. At this point, I seek leave to move the revised amendments circulated in my name together.
Leave granted.
MS HUNTER: I move the revised amendments circulated in my name together:
(1) Omit paragraph (3), substitute:
“(3) notes that the:
(a) Chief Minister has written to the Prime Minister seeking an urgent meeting to discuss the impact on the ACT of the Federal Budget and the need to ensure that a disproportionate burden does not fall on the ACT economy; and
(b) Leader of the Federal Greens has proposed a series of alternatives that would prevent the need for public service job cuts;”.
(2) Add:
“(5) calls on the Commonwealth Government to protect Commonwealth public servants in Canberra from bearing a disproportionate burden of its efforts to save money.”.
I guess that I was unhappy with the language in Mr Seselja’s original motion when it talked about demanding that certain things happen. It was really about “calling on”. I will just go through my revised amendments.
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