Page 170 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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The same officer says:
The advice that the government has received is that, over the forward estimates, the funding profile that you—
federal Labor—
determined translated into 8,819 fewer Public Service jobs, and that the reduction combined with another 846 jobs from so-called more efficient management structures and 4,808 jobs through additional efficiency dividend to 2.25 per cent takes the total reduction in public sector staff to 14,473—as a result of decisions that you—
Senator Wong—
made before the last election—that were never publicly disclosed.
I do not see the difficulty in changing that number from the supposed 12,000 to the 14,500 job cuts—the approximately 14,500 job cuts that will be cut from the Australian public service and the impact that they would have on the ACT economy. I am not sure why you would object to that statement of fact.
Either this place is now saying that the evidence given was wrong, or they have just got their heads in the sand and run this denial route that Labor never cuts public service jobs. Well, it is 14,473 jobs. I say to those opposite, Madam Speaker, that I do not recall any one of them standing up to their federal colleagues to stop those job cuts. That is unlike this side, who will take on all comers on any occasion to defend the ACT—as we have done proudly for many years and as we will continue to do, because we understand the importance of the jobs. It is bigger, sometimes, than party politics; it is a shame that those opposite do not have that same view.
This is an important motion, because it finishes with something that I have been going on about for quite some time, something the government has failed to achieve—to support the diversification of the territory’s economy. When Labor came to office in 2001, 60 per cent of the employment in the ACT was in the private sector. Sixty per cent! The latest ABS stats say that it is down to 49 per cent.
Mr Barr interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Order, Mr Barr. You can contribute to the debate in the normal way.
MR SMYTH: It is 49 per cent. It is the same as when the Carnell government came to office in 1995, when 60 per cent of the employment was in the public sector. They changed that. There were certainly difficulties in the Howard years, but they managed to change the nature of Canberra for all time.
It is interesting that in the book that, oddly enough, Mr Leigh has just launched, the book called Creative Capital, many of the projects cited started under the previous Liberal government. We saw the opportunity here; we saw the potential. We saw the
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