Page 1448 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 14 May 2014
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their jobs with a swipe of the Treasurer’s pen and the dance in his office—the best day of his life. I can tell you that I have already had people telling me it was not the best day of their lives.
It is not only the jobs; it is the attacks on our institutions—$25 million gone from the University of Canberra. The opportunity for the University of Canberra to specialise in making our teachers the best teachers in Australia so that our children can have access to the best teachers—gone. $26 million committed, $1 million paid, $25 million gone. $6.5 million from ANU as part of the work they do through the Coombs centre with the Department of Industry—gone. NICTA—gone. No federal government funding for that. In a year’s time—gone. You have to fundraise all your own money from private sources, apart from the small support that small governments like us can give. Seventy-odd jobs in Canberra. That’s diversification for you, isn’t it, Mr Smyth? There we are growing a fantastic institution in NICTA, which is doing incredible work. Anyone who has been over there to see the work they do would know that. “Oh, well. Cut ‘em loose. Off they go.”
Let’s look at other things that were cut last night: national education reform and national health funding reform. “Don’t worry. The states and territories run health and education. We can take $80 billion out of that around the country. We can just cut elective surgery from being delivered in hospitals because we don’t run them. We don’t care about them. You go and fix it.” It is good to see some of the Liberal premiers coming out and calling this for what it is—the biggest cost shift we have seen since federation probably and certainly since we have signed up to all the agreements we have. That is what they are doing in other states. They are saying, “This is not acceptable to us,” but that is what happened to Canberra last night.
National partnerships on Indigenous early childhood development—terminated, when we know that in closing the gap one of the fundamental deliverables is to make sure Indigenous young people and children at the earliest age are supported in their education. Gone. Terminated from July 2014. $1.1 million gone. There go the West Belconnen Child and Family Centre programs. The national partnership on financial assistance for long-stay older patients—terminated from July 2014. Worth $4 million, and this is older people in hospital awaiting transition to nursing home accommodation. Gone.
Other payments ceased: the national partnership on concessions for pension concession cards and seniors card holders, the preventative health partnership, the training places for single and teenage parents, I have spoken about the public hospital one and adult dental services will go. Public dental services—gone.
This is what happened to this city last night, and we are then meant to swallow some pill that it is good that we got $26.8 million for DSS to stay in Tuggeranong. So withdraw hundreds of millions of economic activity through jobs and slash payments to our budget, and Senator Seselja tells us we should be feeling really good this morning because DSS is staying in Tuggeranong. It is not expanding; it is not doing anything other than staying where they are. Well, I am not going to cop that as a good outcome last night.
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