Page 198 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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Mr Tune:
In terms of the ED, yes, that is true.
Senator Wong went on to imply and outline that all of the announcements that the previous government made were published statements by the former government. Mr Tune replied:
Correct.
So they were not very secret. They were public, published statements, so there was no hidden agenda.
The committee then went on to examine the question of the public sector job losses. Mr Tune stated that the 14,500 figure that the Liberal Party nationally have put into the public arena is the reduction in the size. It is different from the number of redundancies. Senator Wong asked:
So it is a reduction in the total size of the Public Service, which might include non-ongoing, staffing freeze—
Mr Tune replied:
Correct.
Senator Wong said:
So it is not actually redundancies.
Mr Tune replied:
No—you have a whole series of other variables you have to take into account when you move from staff reduction to redundancies.
Senator Wong later in the hearing went on to outline that the efficiency dividend would have to have been managed in a manner that was consistent with the previous Labor government’s policy. Mr Tune replied:
It was always made clear to agencies that there was an order of preference…that was the decision tree: you focused first on non-staff costs; you focused then on staff costs through natural attrition; then you focused on voluntary redundancies.
In the implementation of any of the previous efficiency dividends, the previous government indicated what the priority was, and non-staffing savings were first. What has happened is that the current government is considering a change to that policy. So Senator Wong directly asked:
So there has not been a change to the policy as yet, but there is one contemplated and currently being considered?
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