Page 4097 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 26 November 2014
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This will not only impact on our local ABC directly. Cuts to the press gallery up on the hill will also affect Canberra. What is so frustrating about this move of the federal government in cutting thousands of jobs is that we know—and we have seen it many times before—that the government will cut jobs, pay out millions of dollars in voluntary redundancy payouts, pay more for consultants to do the same work and then slowly rebuild the public service because it will work out that it is cheaper than paying consultants.
Perhaps one of the most frustrating things with the federal government cuts to the commonwealth public service here in Canberra is the cyclical nature of it. I guess that is the way people do things, but it ignores the fact that this has a very real impact on people’s lives. People go through significant upheaval in these processes. We could do with taking a more long-term approach in tackling some of these issues. If the budget is out of line, we should be thinking rather more strategically about how that can be addressed rather than just coming in and going, “It’s easy to whack jobs in Canberra and we’ll take that as the first order of business.” That is a poor way to go about finding sustainability in the budget process.
I welcome Ms Porter’s motion today as an opportunity to talk about where the Canberra economy is at and the impacts that are happening to it at the moment, as well as some of the areas where I think we can make progress in supporting both the economy but particularly jobs within the Canberra context.
MS BERRY (Ginninderra) (4.31): Like many other people in this place, I have grown up in Canberra and I know just how much our city and my local community have changed. Belconnen has changed a lot since my time as a child. Our government has been delivering essential infrastructure and services, combined with a commitment to social justice, economic responsibility and environmental sustainability.
Our government has made clear choices to support investment across Canberra, to support businesses and to support jobs. The government’s strategy is supporting the underlying strengths of the ACT economy and long-term growth. The ACT economy has been among the strongest nationally for a number of years, with high levels of productivity, strong growth and low unemployment. But while the ACT economy is relatively strong, there are some real challenges that we all face and we have been talking about them here today.
Of course, the federal government’s savage and ongoing cuts to the public service, funding cuts to our schools and health services and recently announced cuts to the ABC impact on our economy, on the level of services in our community and personally on the many people who lose their jobs. There are many more people in our community living in uncertainty, with the prospect of more job cuts to come. While public sector jobs will be lost all across Australia, the ACT will be hit particularly hard and it will affect the ACT disproportionately because the cuts are concentrated here. Job cuts affect all aspects of the Canberra economy, particularly small businesses.
Mr Smyth can sit over there, look at the past and continue to blame things that happened in the past. He will not acknowledge—he refuses to acknowledge—that there are cuts happening now, bigger cuts that will hurt our community. They are
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