Page 982 - Week 03 - Thursday, 28 February 2013
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MR SMYTH: We have already said we do not agree with the cuts. We do not agree with the cuts. But you would not work with us. You would not stand up to your own colleagues. You actually have no credibility when you have done nothing to stop federal Labor’s current cuts in pursuit of a surplus that has never appeared and will never appear. There will never be a surplus under federal Labor. Most people in Australia today cannot remember a surplus under federal Labor. Indeed, there are not too many surpluses under local Labor as well. I think in 13 years they have budgeted for a single surplus. They have budgeted for one surplus. That is an outstanding record of mismanagement.
Mr Barr: And achieved 10.
MR SMYTH: Lucked it in, didn’t you? You achieved 10 even though you did not budget for them. That goes more to your predictions and your budgets than anything else.
What is the crux of the MPI today? The crux of the MPI today is that only Labor care about jobs. I have never heard such a ridiculous statement in my life. I was in the Assembly when we were creating jobs despite the Howard cuts. And we were quite open about it. Kate Carnell went after Howard the same as she went after Hawke or Keating, whoever it was that was causing damage to the ACT. She did it openly and she did it courageously, and we put in place programs. We know what these effects are.
But if you talk to any federal public servant today in their department, they know of the cuts, they know of the restrictions and they know of the damage that it is doing to the fibre of the Australian public service. And that comes on top of the damage of the Rudd years, where, through arrogance, Mr Rudd treated the public service with contempt. The stories are legion, but I think the most insightful, of course, is when the Chief of the Defence Force Angus Houston was left loitering in Mr Rudd’s foyer because for something like three hours the then Prime Minister was too busy to talk to the officer who was in charge of Australians serving overseas. And in the end, to his eternal credit, Angus Houston said, “I have got better things to do than wait for you.”
Of course when there were rumours that Kevin Rudd was about to reappear, many in the federal public service, particularly senior officers, said, “We are not hanging around for this. We went through it last time, where people were treated with contempt.” And that contempt continues under the current government, where they do not take the advice they are given. We see so many policy failures of federal Labor and the waste of taxpayers’ dollars because we have got a Prime Minister who cannot put into place a single coherent policy for the delivery of anything.
If you go back over the five years of federal Labor, the economic and the policy disasters are legion, the waste of taxpayers’ money is legion and the effect on the economy is apparent. And you only have to look at the latest industry building policy that they released, that the minister had a dixer on today. I have to say that I was quite surprised that anyone would try to connect themselves to that policy, because it sunk like the stone that it is, the millstone that it is around the neck of industry in this
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