Page 2158 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 June 2005

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Question so resolved in the affirmative

Question put:

That Mr Stefaniak’s motion be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

Questions without notice

Fire management unit

MR STEFANIAK: Mr Speaker, my question is to Mr Hargreaves as Minister for Urban Services. Minister, page 70 of the latest state of the service report notes that, at 30 June 2004, urban services had 1,124.27 full-time equivalent staff. Yesterday you stated that, as a result of a restructure, the department will be reducing its headcount by 80 full-time equivalent positions, down from 1,086 to 1,006. So you have already mislaid, on that, 38.27 full-time equivalents. Urban services employs about 171 contract and casual staff. I am told that, for example, the Canberra Connect shopfront sources a lot of its staff from a local labour hire firm. Will the department be shedding casual and contract staff as well as the 80 permanent positions?

MR HARGREAVES: I thank Mr Stefaniak for the question. My advice is that, in recent times, and the times on which our decisions were based, the full-time equivalent staffing of the Department of Urban Services was 1,086. I will take the numbers Mr Stefaniak has quoted on notice and have a reconciliation done on that. There can sometimes be confusion in the nature of counting, where we start to count casuals and contract staff and all that sort of stuff. I will make sure that the numbers we talk about are consistent. It is the intention that the Department of Urban Services will reduce by 80 full-time equivalent staff. I have said that a number of times before. The nature of that shedding will be the subject of the total restructure process within the Department of Urban Services.

I have said this before: we need to go away from this antiquated idea that we inherited from the Liberal Party that we have silos contracting services to each other through the purchaser/provider system. We need to provide services to the people of the ACT, not to contract management when it is unnecessary. The total restructure of the Department of Urban Services will reveal the extent to which that reduction will be made. It can be made in a number of ways. It can be made by voluntary redundancies—we have said that before—it can be made through restructure through the redistribution of tasks; or it can

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