Page 2133 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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Now the dust has settled on the federal election, ACT public servants face another federal term burdened by efficiency dividends. The coalition has pledged to cut $1.5 billion from public service spending over the next four years, leaving the efficiency dividend at two per cent over the next two, an announcement made just a measly two days before the federal election because they were trying to hide it.
The Nationals will continue peddling their misguided decentralisation agenda. Let us not forget the coalition’s plan to carve up the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, shifting 76 jobs, a quarter of that agency’s staff, to regional towns right across New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. This decision beggars belief in light of the damning Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission report, a report that highlighted grave concerns about negligence and maladministration within the authority. Surely the focus should be on addressing these problems rather than pork-barrelling across multiple locations with a problem child.
That is not all. Since I last spoke about decentralisation in this chamber, we have learned that the coalition will move another 24 public services jobs to Orange, in central western New South Wales, a region where the Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers Party continued to snatch votes from the Nationals at the New South Wales state election. We still do not know where these APS jobs are being taken from.
If that was not enough, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has appointed himself Minister for the Public Service. This is the same man who continually castigates the so-called Canberra bubble and fails to differentiate between Parliament House and the rest of this great city and its people. I am greatly concerned about the coalition’s disdain for Canberra and the impact of its misguided and lazy policies.
Canberra’s public servants are an easy target for a federal government that has chosen to plunder the national capital rather than come up with better policies and more innovative job creation. It is not good enough now and it has never been good enough. It is incumbent on all of us, as representatives of the ACT, to denounce attacks on our workers and our city more broadly.
I will give credit where it is due in that we are starting to see Senator Seselja speak up about the decentralisation agenda. But Miss Burch’s claims earlier were, frankly, an embellishment. He was largely silent when Canberrans expected him to speak up. In many ways, it is too little, too late. The damage has started and it is hurting. It has been reported that Senator Seselja made a commitment last week to make the case to the new minister for decentralisation, God help us, about how the focus should be on decentralising jobs from cities like Sydney and Melbourne, rather than targeting Canberra. We look forward to the update on how these urgent discussions go. Instead of writing and speaking outrageous claims here today, I suggest that Miss Burch more wisely use her time to follow up with her colleague she wants to so vigorously defend.
The ACT government remains committed to protecting and, importantly, creating Canberra jobs. We practise what we preach. The recently announced ACT budget includes funding to recruit another 81 doctors, nurses and other health professionals
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