Page 1752 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 May 2013
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The meat axe! Where is the meat axe now? It is the Gillard meat axe, isn’t it? We know what is going on in the federal public service right here and now. She is just doing what Kevvie was promising before, old Kevin Rudd—applying the meat axe to its own administrative bloating for the better part of the decade.
No squeals of dissent from Simon Corbell, Andrew Barr or Katy Gallagher then? No: they were in lock step with Kevin Rudd. And now you are in lock step with Julia Gillard as she is hacking and slashing the public service. You say nothing about it, but somehow you are worried about what might happen, potentially, if there is a change of government sometime in the future. Nonsense. It is an absolute nonsense.
But it is not just you mob that are the problem; it is your federal counterparts as well. Let us see what Andrew Leigh said in 2011:
The efficiency dividend has been in place for a long time and I’m confident that it shouldn’t lead to job losses.
Rubbish. Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. There is Andrew Leigh saying one thing: it will not lead to job losses. That is not true; we saw it on the front page of the Canberra Times today. And there is more to come: we know that it is happening right now; 3,000 is just a taster.
What about Gai Brodtmann, Andrew Leigh and Katy Gallagher: “Slashing public service jobs will affect the entire Canberra economy” Isn’t that what Julia Gillard is doing? Let us rail against that in this place then; let us rail against that right now, Dr Bourke. No.
When you look at the list of where these jobs come from under Julia Gillard it is concerning. Defence shed 972 jobs. And we know that they have cut billions out of defence; they have got it down to the lowest amount of defence spending as a proportion of GDP since 1938. But that would suit those lefties opposite. There is the ATO. This mob do not really want to count figures—based on the way that they manage their budget, with a $7.5 billion deficit going to a $12 billion deficit to a $17.5 billion deficit in the space of two weeks. So cut the ATO by 420 jobs. Human Services—1,000 jobs.
But here you go: Prime Minister and Cabinet—another 20 jobs. They have grown. The department of immigration—that has grown. Panic. Panic. There you go. Ridiculous.
There is a whole bunch of redundancies that are being announced. The Department of Finance and Deregulation and the department of broadband and communications—a call for 100 voluntary redundancies. CSIRO is slashing 200 jobs. Treasury announced 150 redundancies. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations announced 500 redundancies. Wow! They have slashed entire departments.
And they have moved people interstate. Remember the climate change department—1,094 members working from offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Samoa?
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