Page 3082 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
In terms of making comments about whether or not they are an Aboriginal organisation, they are recognised by everyone in the community as such. And I think we do have to be careful, when comments are made by others that they may not be so, that we do not use that as a basis to not then recognise them as an Aboriginal organisation. I will not make any further comments.
As I said, it is a very comprehensive report, with a number of recommendations—many recommendations. I look forward to the response from the government to those recommendations in the report. Once again, I do thank all my fellow committee members for their cooperation, as I said, not just through the hearings but also in the report deliberations. I think we did work well together as a committee. Again I thank the committee secretaries for pulling all these processes together and making them run so smoothly.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella) (11.14): I would like to join the chair and probably other committee members in thanking members for their contributions to our deliberations on this rather extensive report. Also I would like to add my thanks to the committee secretaries who collectively put together this report. It is not an easy task for committee secretaries to distil the views of the many members and the various positions that members were put in, in this particular exercise. I think it is particularly incumbent upon the committee to recognise their efforts. Sam Salvaneschi led a particularly competent bunch of committee secretaries, and I think that needs to be said on the public record.
I draw people’s attention to the Centre for International Economics report which is in volume 3. Interestingly, it has been glossed over, so far; and I suspect it will be glossed over when opposition members get up and speak. Essentially the CIE report congratulated, in my view, the budget prepared by the Treasurer, Mr Barr. In fact they highlighted quite a number of approaches, which was rather good. One of them was that the assumptions were by and large conservative and in line with recent trends. We do not hear that said by those opposite. It says, “Savings plan appears to be reasonable.” Those sorts of comments are peppered through this report.
They talk about, and in fact debunk, a lot of the claims by those opposite that there will be doom and gloom in the ACT because of the budget cuts to jobs. In fact the CIE in their report estimates that the ACT’s share of the 4,200 jobs that will be cut federally will be 1,025. Markus Mannheim, that illustrious reporter for the Canberra Times, had it at 1,400, but then again, Markus always errs on the conservative side, I suspect. But either way it is considerably less than the tens of thousands of jobs predicted by those opposite. It also pales into insignificance compared to the 20,000 or so job cuts that Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey have foreshadowed should they ever have the commonwealth public service in the grip of their iron fist. That is a scary thought indeed.
Madam Deputy Speaker, the report, as you can see, has an incredible number of recommendations and it is a very thick report. But you will notice that the dissenting report from those opposite is quite thin. I think what we are seeing in this dissenting report is just those particular aspects of the report which the opposition sought to
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video