Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4073 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

There is one other statistic I want to leave you with and which really underscores the Government's commitment to jobs. In the last financial year, there were 640 fewer jobs in the ACT Public Service. Mrs Carnell comes in here and talks about 2,700 made-up jobs. Last financial year, 640 jobs disappeared from her own Public Service. So much for Mrs Carnell's commitment to jobs! Once again, Mrs Carnell has inserted in this budget a redundancy pool which will eliminate more jobs in the ACT Public Service than Mrs Carnell claims will be created.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (11.37): Mr Speaker, it was very interesting to hear that diatribe, and even more interesting to hear it from the Leader of the Opposition. Those of us who have been in this place for a while have heard certainly Ms Follett say on many occasions that the future of Canberra is with small business. In fact, most of those opposite - except Mr Berry, who still thinks "profit" is a dirty word - believe that the future of this city is in the business sector. The suggestion by the Leader of the Opposition that the only decent job, or the only possible job, is a job with government, and that if a job is not with government, if a job happens to be with Unisys in the computer area or if it happens to be in the housing industry, then somehow it is not a real job is an incredibly strange and, I suspect, hypocritical statement. Everybody in this place, I suspect, over time - - -

Mr Berry: I do not think you are allowed to impute that he is a hypocrite.

MRS CARNELL: You can say that things are hypocritical statements, Mr Berry. You just cannot say that somebody is hypocritical.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Berry, that was not directed at a person. There is no point of order.

Mr Berry: It was imputing that - - -

MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Whitecross's suggestion that it is not an appropriate approach for a government in the ACT at this time to bring in a budget that stimulates business to employ strikes me as an extraordinarily unusual statement. His suggestion that the ACT Government should be growing at a time when we all understand that we have to live with fewer resources in government is an extraordinary statement. Where does Mr Whitecross think that the ACT Government is going to get the money to maintain or increase staff on our books?

Mr Whitecross: Did I say that?

MRS CARNELL: Yes. Actually, you did. You suggested that there was something awful about having a budget that stimulated jobs in such areas as Unisys and the housing industry, and went on to criticise the ACT Government for reducing the size of the Public Service. The fact is that the previous Government was doing that - and doing it for all the right reasons. As we all know, the Federal Government has reduced the amount of money that the ACT gets by 50 per cent in real terms. That means that we have

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .