Page 3781 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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This motion is on the table today because the government has failed to take into account a report from the public accounts committee, a tripartisan committee, and the estimates report. I have sat through a few estimates committees, from both sides of the table, and I have never seen an issue where 19 recommendations were made about one subject. Each of the recommendations is quite valid. It is quite valid to seek more information. The committee itself says that the information and explanations provided by the government were confusing. And we were shunted from pillar to post. One minister would say, “That is the other minister’s job.” When you ask the other minister he would say, “No, that is the other minister’s job”.
That is the problem with this process. There is nothing underpinning the need to do it and to do it in the way that the government has said. We all believe public servants should be accommodated in appropriate accommodation. We know the peril to our public service of the commonwealth public service which can currently provide better accommodation and greater wages and opportunities than our much smaller public service.
But that is an indictment of 10 years of wasted time by this government by not ensuring that they had a program in place to ensure that the upgrades were done. It is this government’s problem. It is a problem created by this government. And this is not the answer. I do not think the effect of moving all of the public servants out of the Dickson area has been taken into account. What effect will it have, for instance, on Dickson? What influence and impact will it have on Dickson?
We do not know all the costs. For instance, we are still yet to find out what the cost of the new motor registry will be and where it will be. We do not know that. We have got some savings that were delivered on a single piece of A4 paper, bodgied up after a committee meeting where the promise was given to hand them over. This flimsy piece of paper turned up which, I think, was disputed and debunked almost immediately because of the things that were not included in it.
We have had a series of questions they have refused to answer. The minister says, “We have got private sector support. We have got all these private sector companies involved.” If you are paying private sector companies to be involved, of course they will be involved. Of course they will. You paid for it, and you should get what you paid for.
But the problem here is: we do not have a proper starting point. Ms Hunter said, “It will only take 3,500 public servants.” What about the rest of the 20,000? What are there, about 5,000 nurses? Most of them work in hospitals. There are about 5,000 teachers. They will work in schools. There are almost 1,000 police officers and supporting staff. They are going to work in police stations. For the remainder, the 8,000 to 9,000 purely administrative staff, yes, this will be a significant group of them in one location. But the case has not yet been made. And the government is not making the case.
I am not sure what the minister is doing. The minister is now going to do some market testing. But we were told that all the options had been looked at, in those hearings that
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