Page 159 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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Canberra and has been very strong in articulating the truth. He has been very up-front and very honest, as the Canberra Liberals and the federal Liberals have been before elections, and particularly in the lead-up to the last federal election, where there was no attempt to hide what Mr Abbott was saying—no attempt at all. It was an honest position. On the contrary, as has been pointed out in evidence given by public servants regarding the Labor Party, there has been a reduction of 14,473 jobs as a result of decisions made before the last election that were never publicly disclosed.
I think that is absolutely outrageous. There are any number of quotes from Andrew Leigh, from Gai Brodtmann, from Kate Lundy, from this mob opposite, from the Greens and from sections of the unions that were telling a very different story. Now that the truth is out there, I hope that you will show balance, Chief Minister. I hope that now that the truth has been exposed you will acknowledge that and stop trying to play politics. What I hear from you lot is just one side of the story, and you are trying to present some myths and some untruths.
This perhaps should not be a surprise to any of us, because if we go back to 2007 and what Mr Rudd said, he said that he was dead serious about trimming the size of the public service. I quote:
It just strikes me as passing strange that this Howard government that supposedly belongs to the conservative side of politics has not systematically applied the meat axe to its own administrative bloating for the better part of a decade.
What we know is that Kevin Rudd did that. He, because of decisions made by the previous government, is responsible for the loss of 14,500 jobs. It leaves the federal coalition in a very difficult position. They have inherited a budget catastrophe on the hill. I do not think anyone is in dispute about that. They have inherited this figure of 14,500 job cuts from the public service, embedded in the forward estimates, and they have got to untangle this mess. They are in the middle of doing that, and they have not imposed any cuts on any department. There has not yet been a budget under this government, so it is abject and rank hypocrisy for anybody to be claiming that cuts occurring in the federal public service are not the creation of the Labor Party.
I have circulated an amendment, which I will move shortly, that is not attempting to do anything other than lay out the truth. It indicates quite clearly, as I have said, based on evidence from the departmental secretary, what impacts federal Labor’s 14,500 job cuts from the Australian public service will have on the ACT economy. It goes on to state a number of other very reasonable positions. It is all in front of you to be read.
If we are going to have a serious conversation about business and jobs, we need to stop playing the one side of the political game that we hear from those opposite, from the Greens and from their union mates, which is a myth. The more you do and the more you say, the more discredit you bring on yourselves. Now that the truth is out there, now that it is in black and white, the more you continue to perpetuate the myth, the more it can be said that you are simply peddling untruths for your own political gain and that you care very little about the consequences of job cuts and you care very little about getting this economy moving. Based on the debate that we had earlier today, when Mr Coe called for some initiatives to support the construction sector, you
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