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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (6 May) . . Page.. 983 ..

Those opposite are now pushing here the old approach, the dated approach, the yesteryear approach: "Whatever the Liberals are doing, wind it back. Stop the clock. We want to go back to the good old days. Public Service a la the 1970s is pretty good for us. We will stick with that. Thanks very much". Those opposite say, "Yes, that is good enough. If he turns up for work each day, if he pushes the paper across the desk, if he is not off his rocker or gaga, we will keep him in that job". That is not what the people of Canberra expect from their senior public servants. They expect performance. And you cannot get performance unless you have performance-based contracts, Mr Speaker. That is why this Government is consistently supportive of that concept and why this Government argues that we should be consistent across the whole public sector. We now have those performance contracts across the whole public sector. Let us put them in place for the Canberra Institute of Technology as well.

I think it is a bit rich to hear lecturing about ideology. It is ideology which opposes this concept, because it is only ideology that says that you should not be taking the performance of a person as a criterion for their continuing in that job.

Mr Berry: Misbehaviour is performance, Gary.

MR HUMPHRIES: No. Mr Berry supremely fails to understand. We are not talking about misbehaviour. You can still fail to perform but not misbehave. It is not misbehaviour to be tardy in getting submissions up to the Minister about a particular issue. It is not misbehaviour to neglect your duty in terms of certain matters. If we tried to sack somebody because we argued that they were misbehaving because they had not got their submissions up to the Minister in the time required, those opposite would go ballistic. "What kind of draconian government are you?", they would say.

The world has moved on. Even your colleagues in other places are not so ideologically blinkered that they do not realise that this kind of approach is the way to manage an efficient, modern public service. Even they have recognised that fact and they have now embraced this concept. Mr Speaker, the tired, old left-wing ideology which runs the ACT branch of the Labor Party - - -

Ms McRae: You wish.

MR HUMPHRIES: You wish, too. I do know how the numbers are on this ticket you have selected. It is a bit dicey. You do not know what is going to happen when you come up to the actual vote because there are no tickets to be run anymore. You might get dumped.

Ms McRae: You will see.

MR HUMPHRIES: We will see what happens. We will, indeed.

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