Page 199 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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Let us just focus on this. Is the new government going to change its policy and focus on staff cuts ahead of savings in other areas? Mr Tune responded, “Yes, yes, they are.” The previous government, the Labor government, had an approach that job reductions were the last resort. This government, this new Liberal government, has them as the first resort. All of this was not reported by the Leader of the Opposition in his commentary in relation to these hearings. I think it is indeed a point that is worth making.
The final point I want to make in relation to the particular exchange with this committee is that, in order to arrive at this figure of 14,500 that has been put into the public arena by the Liberal Party, there were a series of significant assumptions that had to be made. Mr Tune went to the detail of that. They go to the extent that they were having to project forward and make assumptions about wage costs over the next four years. They take the base and then they assume. These are figures that have to have some form of assumption applied to them, Mr Tune said. They then asked how many people would leave the service voluntarily over the period, and 26,000 was the answer.
So 26,000 people are anticipated to leave the service over the next four years, and this Liberal government has put out a view that the previous government had put in train a process where 14,500 people would be sacked under the previous government’s policies—simply not true, and entirely possible, according to the finance department, for there to be an achievement of that sort of outcome through natural attrition. That question was raised. This in fact was the policy position that the Liberal Party took to the last election, that they would achieve 12,000 through natural attrition, and now apparently they are backing away from that.
Mr Coe interjecting—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Lawder): Order, Mr Coe!
MR BARR: I am simply going, Mr Coe—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: There is no need to address Mr Coe.
MR BARR: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I am simply repeating what the federal minister has said in this hearing and, when pressed, what the secretary of the finance department has said. Prior to the election we were going to have 12,000 jobs go by natural attrition. That was the Liberal Party’s policy. Now, after the election, that has changed. That has changed on the basis of a large number of dodgy assumptions. When pressed, the finance department officials have indicated that they were required to provide a series of numbers to the new government based on a series of unrealistic assumptions. So it is entirely disingenuous of the Leader of the Opposition to suggest that the previous government had an agenda to cut 14,500 jobs from the commonwealth public service. That certainly was not the case. If there has been a change in policy since the election, that change in policy has come from the new government. It relates now to staff cuts first, not staff cuts last, and the number of positions appears to be increasing. We will see in the budget just how bad it is going to be for this city.
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