Page 156 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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I appreciate, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you might not take my word for that. You might be sceptical. But I would hope that you would trust the Secretary to the Department of Finance, Mr David Tune. He is an apolitical public servant doing his job, and he has appeared before estimates committees on the hill. I would like to quote from his evidence under questioning by a number of senators, including, I believe, Senator Wong. Let me quote:
… there are three parts to this. Let’s start with the easy one, probably; that is the simplest way. The simplest one is the most efficient management structures, where the estimate is 846 reduction in staffing over three years. That basically falls out of the costing that was done for the climate change package. That is a net costing, so that was assuming inherently that there would be 800 redundancies required. An allowance was made for that in the costings. That was done prior to the election being called.
I say it again:
That was done prior to the election being called.
He goes on to say:
The second one is the efficiency dividend; and, as I said, the assumption there was—it is just a mechanical process to add in the extra efficiency dividend to the departmental costs—4,808. As I said earlier, 55 per cent of that would apply to staff costs and 45 per cent to non-staff costs …
The third one is the other one we have been talking about, which is the implicit decrease in staffing contained within the forward estimates. As I started to describe earlier, with that one we forecast some projections of staff salary and wage costs plus superannuation on-costs in aggregate, which are reported in the budget papers. Using the base of the ASL numbers that were also reported in the last budget, we then started to project forward about how many staff we could afford with that amount of dollars for wages and salaries. We applied an indexation factor of three per cent around that for the out years. If you divide all that up, that gives you a figure of 8,819 …
When you add those figures together, Madam Deputy Speaker—decisions of the previous Labor government that are embedded in the forward estimates—the figure for jobs being cut, based on evidence from the Secretary to the Department of Finance, Mr David Tune, is 14,500 job cuts under Labor. That is what it is. I notice those opposite are all studiously trying to avoid any eye contact because they know that they and their federal colleagues have been out there peddling untruths. They have been denying that that was happening, just as we have seen—
Mr Barr interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Barr, you can speak to the amendment later, if you wish.
MR HANSON: In further evidence, Senator Wong was asking questions. In response, this was said:
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