Page 1447 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 14 May 2014
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MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Health and Minister for Higher Education) (11.34): What a sorry state of affairs this is that the morning after this city got a belting we have the 3IC leading the charge for the Canberra Liberals. The opposition leader, missing in action—or perhaps we should say missing in inaction. He has not had a thing to say, and that says one of two things: one, he does not care and does not think what happened last night matters to people in Canberra; or two, he is too embarrassed to join the chorus of the Abbott apologists over there to try and make it everybody else’s fault other than the government that determined the outcomes they delivered in the budget last night and their consequential impacts in Canberra.
We can all sit here and go, “Well, so many jobs were in last year’s budget, so many jobs are in this year’s budget,” but let’s think for a moment about what it means—16,500 jobs to go, of which we expect somewhere near 50 per cent will come from our home city—our neighbours, our colleagues, our kids’ friends’ parents. That is what it means today, and the Canberra Liberals have managed to have two people here in this chamber for this important debate this morning, and not even their most senior members. They could not be bothered, could not be in here to stand up for this city and express their concern. Instead, 3IC moves an amendment that makes it all the ACT government’s fault.
That is the situation we are in now, and it is not just those 6,500 or 7,500 or, indeed, 8,000 jobs that might go from Canberra—we are still trying to work out how many there are—it is all the other jobs that will be affected. Jobs in the private sector, which Mr Smyth seems to care more about than the public sector, their pipeline of work will be affected by what happened last night.
We have the Australian Taxation Office losing massive amounts of jobs, the industry department losing 1,700 jobs, Immigration and Border Protection losing jobs, DFAT losing jobs, the Federal Police losing jobs, 500 jobs from Health in Canberra and 500 jobs from the Treasury department in Canberra. This is what happened last night to this city. This morning many Canberrans woke up, one, probably not knowing if they had a job—thousands of them woke up to that—or, two, worried about the impact that someone else’s job loss would have on them, and the Canberra Liberals cannot even be bothered to debate it.
The measure of a good politician is their ability to stand up and speak up for their community when things like this happen. Last night we had Mr Smyth providing the commentary. Mr Hanson could not even find the time to actually provide the first response of how concerned he was for our city.
Think about the impact of the job losses on those people, their children, their families, their mortgages. These are real people who are just dismissed with, “Oh well, 16,500 jobs, no worries.” Let’s remember the outcry when 1,200 jobs went from Geelong. Let’s remember the outcry when 1,800 jobs went from areas like Newcastle. Let’s remember the jobs that will go from the automotive industry over the next few years. We are sorry for those people too, but let’s share the same compassion and the same concern for the 6,500 people, at a minimum, that were wiped out in terms of
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