Page 2440 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 22 August 2006
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It is also worth touching on the ACT public service as a whole, particularly with reference to its size and its potential to achieve a significant proportion of efficiencies if approached in a sensible way.
According to the chief executive officer in the estimates committee, the comparable numbers are for 2006-07, a staffing level of 15,887 and for 2005-06, 16,205. Those comparable numbers therefore show a decline in staffing levels of 318. Of course, this was all dealt with later and we sought further clarification of those responses from the government.
This is a drop in the ocean compared with what is required to make the ACT public service an effective and streamlined entity that best serves the needs of Canberrans. The chief executive officer also conceded the following in estimates:
It is reasonable to assume that when at least 70 per cent of your cost base is reflected in staff costs the vast majority of savings will come from staff reductions. That is a reasonable assumption to make.
It pays for us to look at what has happened to the ACT public service since the Stanhope government came to power in 2001. In that time they have enjoyed a revenue bonanza worth some $900 million from land sales, stamp duty and GST, much of which has been wasted—some $445 million of it—on employing 2,300 more public servants and paying them more, in a period when the territory’s population growth has by no means matched that level of expansion.
One wonders how the territory government can seriously reconcile its obligations and supposed commitment to streamlining its administration with this rather unenviable legacy hanging over it. Likewise, the government’s long overdue decision to sell the territory-owned Rhodium Asset Solutions has underlined its inability to manage non-core businesses and indicated that it has no idea where its economic priorities lie. As the Chief Minister conceded in estimates—and I will quote him:
I think most essentially a view that the operating of a fleet business does not represent core ACT government business …
I got up within about 12 weeks of being elected and raised serious questions when Mr Quinlan had the job of looking after Rhodium. I wondered why on earth we were getting into the business of leasing cars and trying to run a business in competition with major institutions.
It has taken a lot longer for the penny to drop in the Chief Minister’s appreciation that we are in a line of business there that is not core business, not what the people of the ACT think we are good at and should be focusing our time on. We ought to be in the business of looking after the health, education—
Mr Stanhope: You ran it for seven years.
MR MULCAHY: I did not have it for any length of time.
Mr Stanhope: Your mob did.
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