Page 2129 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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working at the Department of Administrative Services when Howard cut the whole department. We were at my uncle’s farm up in Parkes when it was announced on the news that the department would be cut. That is how my dad found out he had lost his job.
I remember quite vividly over that Christmas break—I believe it was the Christmas break—walking through the Canberra Centre with my dad and running into lots of people he had previously worked with and talking with them about their job prospects. With a small population such as Canberra, cutting a whole department had a huge impact. People were not finding work easily, because as well as cutting a department, they were not up-staffing in other areas. Suddenly what would have been a regular afternoon shopping trip at the mall turned into a series of commiserations and pep talks, with people trying to stay strong in the face of not having any employment, even though all people wanted to do, as a public servant, was contribute to the wellbeing of the country.
In the week leading up to the recent federal election, the Morrison government left us with a gift that Canberrans resoundingly rejected. We know that the proposed cut of $1.5 billion and thousands of jobs from the public service will not deliver more productivity or efficiency. Instead, it will leave people unemployed and see their jobs outsourced to private companies, costing the taxpayer millions.
Unfortunately, this privatisation has already occurred. In their previous term, the coalition government capped the size of the Australian public service to around or below 2006-07 staffing levels. This means that, regardless of how much work needs to be done, agencies are forced to arbitrarily limit their staff. We know that this staffing cap is contributing to privatisation by labour hire, outsourcing and contracting. As this privatisation increases, services have been worsening.
At the Department of Human Services, 3,000 job cuts have led to serious issues with service delivery. More than 48 million calls went unanswered last year, pensioners have been waiting six months for their claims to be processed, and the robo-debt disaster is continuing to hurt Australians who rely on government support.
Despite this poor performance, the government has started to privatise Centrelink and Medicare. There are 2,750 outsourced call centre jobs and more than 1,000 labour hire employees across the country, including in Medicare. These are jobs that could and should be made secure by returning them to the public service. The Liberals and Nationals will continue with their privatisation of our public service because they have no interest in secure jobs for Canberrans or Australians.
A strong public service needs strong support from its government. A $1.5 billion cut with thousands of job losses is unprecedented. I do not think any representative in this place can stand by or defend such a deplorable slash. Canberrans will be hurt by the coalition government’s anti public service agenda. That is why the Barr Labor government will now have to step up to ensure that Canberrans are provided with the skills and opportunities for jobs within a diversified job sector.
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