Page 3457 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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critical areas in support of the ACT. This will all be gone under Mr Abbott. As I said at the beginning of this speech, there are not just the actual jobs that we are talking about. We are also talking about the flow-on effect to numbers of other jobs in the ACT as people move out of the territory, as people are forced to sell their homes, as they lose their opportunity to be able to pay their mortgages.
We saw it happen before. We will see it happen again. We know that there will be a huge deficit in the ACT. We will all suffer from it. But, of course, we on this side of the chamber actually know what is going to happen. We have experienced it before. We would just like the Liberals on the other side of the house to stand up for Canberra, because all of this will be gone under Mr Abbott.
The wholesale cuts to commonwealth funding and cuts to the commonwealth public sector will damage our city, will damage our economy, damage every member of our community—not just the people who lose their jobs but everybody who lives here. I was here during the time it happened previously and I remember it distinctly. I remember the actual depression that went right throughout the community. People were really depressed at that time.
Mr Hanson: A depression?
Mr Smyth: It is a depression now.
MS PORTER: It was a recession and a depression because people were really depressed by what was happening to them. Mr Seselja and his Liberals think it is amusing. They sit there smiling and thinking it is all amusing and that I am wasting my time, but I am afraid we need to stand up for our city. (Time expired.)
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.18): Can I say that I agree with the motion but with very little of what was said by the speaker. The motion is one that we certainly agree with. As a former public servant, as the son of public servants, I agree about the importance of a stable commonwealth public service.
But we need to first address some of the lies that have been floating around, being perpetuated, particularly by the Greens and the Labor Party acting in coalition and that very credible third party organisation called the ACTU, who would never make up facts to try to get the ALP back into power, would never put forward false information. We need to address some of the facts.
The first fact is this: only one party in the federal election has promised not to sack public servants, and that is the coalition. Only the Liberal and National parties have promised that no public servants will be sacked. I give you this guarantee: if the Labor Party is returned federally there will be public servants sacked in the ACT. The question is only: how many?
The facts speak for themselves. They have already identified billions in savings. They have not said how those billions of savings are going to be effected. So there are going to be billions of dollars in savings. They are spending money hand over fist. How does one suggest that we will pay, for instance, for the rail line from Parramatta
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