Page 2979 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
A quarter of the building at the printing office was used as the departure lounge. Public servants that were made redundant were able to use those facilities to make phone calls and do some courses whilst their period was being borne out before they left without a job. It was quite a distressing time for me to see that occur.
It did not just occur, of course, at admin services. Later on it went through other departments as well. I will go to that in a minute but I want to give a really distinct recollection of one of the occurrences there. That was the termination of permanent Comcar drivers who were asked to take their Comcar cars to the printing office and front an interview with a single person there acting on behalf of PM&C.
They would go in for an interview in a closed room in an office. They were handed a letter which said, “Your services are no longer required. You are now made redundant,” and they were given a cab fare home. There was no time to discuss other options, as occurred for the rest of the department of admin services.
Dr Bourke: Shameful!
MR GENTLEMAN: It was simply shocking. And I think there were around 110 or 115 then-permanent Comcar drivers. At the end of the period there were about five. The last permanent Comcar driver finishes in the ACT at the September election this year. He lives in my suburb actually and I see him most mornings. He is a lovely fellow.
It was quite a distressing time to see all that occur. Hundreds of lives changed in that period and I saw the actual personal hurt of those that had lost their jobs and, of course, who were unable to find other jobs because the whole of Canberra was suffering. As you would be aware, we went through a depression during the period.
Of course, with that dramatic loss of jobs and inability to gain other employment in the territory a lot of people left. Those that stayed saw their house prices dramatically reduced. The median house price, according to reports in the Canberra Times, dropped some $25,000. In those days the median house price was $150,000. So that was a dramatic hit to those that had made purchases. In fact, it was not far from the time that I purchased my first house. The cuts in house prices were quite dramatic.
After the printing office was finally sold off to the private sector, all the people that used to work there left. Some were retained by the new owner of the printing service, but not very many. After that I went to the Department of Defence. I was working in building R8. At the bottom part of the building was the media liaison section. In that area they had Army news and defence news—all those sorts of operations that occurred within the defence regime. But they also had media liaison that went out to the public.
On a Friday morning all staff in the section were called to the conference room at Russell R1. They were not told why. They were told that there were some staff changes about to occur. On the first PowerPoint slide all of the appointed positions for the media section were shown. There were 240-odd positions in the ACT. They were
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video