Page 2267 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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That is why I was quite taken with the amendment. We have Ms Hunter saying that we should add to this. Instead of supporting public servants, as this motion originally did, what we have got, through the Greens-Labor amendments to the motion, is a motion to give the Chief Minister a plug and give the federal Greens a plug. It says:
Leader of the Federal Greens has proposed a series of alternatives that would prevent the need for public service job cuts …
They have proposed it, and what are they going to do to enforce that? Nothing. They are all care, no responsibility. They will put it up, they will throw rocks and they will say, “Isn’t this terrible?” The Greens have the power to do something about it. There will be public servants who are going to lose their jobs in Canberra saying to the Greens: “What are you doing about it? What are you doing to stop it? How are you using your balance of power, your privileged position?”
The Greens now have a power well beyond their vote, well beyond their 10 per cent of the vote. They have significant power now in the federal parliament. Despite what they said before the election, they are choosing not to use it and they are choosing to allow these public servants to be sacked.
Let us not have any of this from Ms Hunter, saying that the federal Greens are doing their bit. They are not. The federal Greens are in a greater position than anyone other than the Labor Party federally to actually make decisions on this. They have chosen not to. So let us be clear on what is happening here. We now have, unfortunately, both sides of politics who have said they are going to reduce the size of the public service. They have both said that they are going to reduce it by 12,000 jobs. The difference now appears to be that federal Labor will reduce it through attrition and redundancies and the federal Liberals will reduce it through attrition. And the Greens will sit by and watch. The Greens will vote for that budget. They will be voting for that budget and endorsing it. They will be endorsing the cuts. They had the chance to do something about it, and they did not.
These amendments should be seen for what they are. They have taken away what should have been unanimous support for an uncontroversial statement. The uncontroversial statement is that we stand up for public servants and we affirm the work that they do. It is something we demand. Why shouldn’t we use strong language? I think people who are about to lose their jobs would want strong language from their Assembly, not weasel words and not the absolutely unscrupulous way in which the Greens have conducted themselves. They pretend to care, but they have got the power to do something and they refuse to use that power. They have sold them out.
When we hear from the Greens at the next election, maybe they will be going after Kate Lundy’s Senate seat rather than Senator Humphries’s seat. It is far more likely that Senator Lundy will be fighting off the Greens. Maybe when they go, it will be Lin Hatfield Dodds again, who endorsed this budget. When Lin Hatfield Dodds gets up there and says, “Vote for me; I’ll protect public servants,” maybe they will say: “What’s Christine Milne doing right now to protect public servants? Nothing. She is selling them out.” People see the true colours. The Greens do not care about public service jobs; they care about the politics of it. When they have got the opportunity to save jobs, they will not do anything about it.
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