Page 2270 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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tell them to go and get a good union and get them to negotiate more wages. That is the Labor response. What we want to do is make sure that we have less money coming into the government’s coffers and more money going into the pockets of everyday Canberrans. It gave me great delight last week to talk about the repeal of the carbon tax which will do just that. It will put an extra $550 into the pockets of Canberrans.
We want to see improved government services. We want to see that as a focus, and we will have much more opportunity throughout the course of this debate to talk about those government services: the health system, the education system and where we should be putting that as a priority and improving those services.
There is a difference between the government’s agenda and our own. I have just outlined that in brief, and I outlined that in my budget reply. It will form the basis of the expression of what we are saying not just in this debate today but throughout the course of the next two years as we lead up to an election. We want to focus on the people of Canberra but we have a government that are focused on themselves.
This executive has grown, and I welcome that. It is nice to have Mr Gentleman here on the front bench. I look forward to interactions with you, Mr Gentleman, through you, Madam Speaker, over the next couple of years. But it is something that was needed. I do agree with the Chief Minister in this respect, and my side supported the legislation that enabled the Chief Minister to appoint as many ministers as he or she deems fit. That is appropriate.
Consequently, the decision was taken last week to better enable that through the increased size of the Assembly. I think that is welcome. I think that we have struggled in this place with the number of ministers and I think we have seen that reflected in the workload and in, I guess, the difficult decision that the Chief Minister had to make in appointing whom that minister would be. I would not have wanted to be in her shoes while she was making that decision.
Across the government more generally there are not just issues, though, in the executive, but a particular highlight I do want to consider is that of bullying. Reading the estimates report, it is clear that this is an issue that is pervasive across the ACT public service. There are a series of recommendations, recommendation 51 through to recommendation 55, that talk about bullying in the ACT public service. I think that we would all, in this place, want to make sure that that is something that we eradicate.
I would commend all ministers to do everything that they can to make sure that the ACT public service is a good place to work, has a good culture. We have seen, be it in Health, be it at CIT and other areas of the public service, there are clearly areas where the culture has needed to be improved. Part of that is a recommendation, recommendation 68, which states:
… that the ACT Government give consideration to establishing an independent Public Service Commissioner, for whom functions should include (i) developing and providing expertise in dealing with bullying matters; and (ii) centrally tracking, monitoring and reporting the incidence of bullying in the ACTPS.
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