Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like Senator Lundy, I want to talk about issues affecting the Australian Capital Territory which I feel will be very pertinent to the federal election that will be held in the next 12 months. Although the election campaign will no doubt include industrial relations, interest rates, economic management and so on, I think it is worth flagging at this point that there will be a very clear additional issue within the context of the ACT—that is, federal Labor’s plan to slash investment in the national capital, particularly in relation to the Australian Public Service.

Although a dynamic and resilient private sector has developed in Canberra over the last decade, it would be wrong to suggest that the ACT economy is no longer dependent on the Australian Public Service employment base. To put this in perspective, there are around 180,000 people employed in the ACT, and over 52,000 of them—29 per cent of the workforce—are employed in the Australian Public Service. Thirty-five per cent of all Australian Public Service employees work in Canberra.

How do we know that Labor intends to reduce public servant numbers if elected at next year’s election? The answer is in some pretty explicit comments that have been made by Mr Lindsay Tanner, Labor’s shadow finance minister—and, rumour has it, possibly Labor’s next shadow Treasurer. Mr Tanner is a member of Labor’s expenditure review committee—in other words, its razor gang.

Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Expenditure review.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, expenditure review. That body is tasked with finding savings for the purpose of funding Labor’s commitments at next year’s election. Perhaps Senator Sherry is also a member of that august body.

Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am indeed!

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My comments, then, are directed partly to you as well. Mr Tanner set the tone for his approach when he made these comments a little while ago:

When was the last razor gang? When was the last serious attempt to rein in government spending?

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The public service now is effectively larger when you take into account the huge expenditure on consultancies and the massive expansion of the upper level, the fat cats. It’s effectively bigger now than it was when John Howard took office. Under him the Liberal Party has become the party of big Government.

The message here stands out like a watermelon in a strawberry patch: Commonwealth public servants—Canberra’s public servants—are again in Labor’s firing line. I say ‘again’ because, in the lead-up to the 2004 federal election, Labor conceded it would abolish 13 government programs, axe seven government agencies, cut 3,000 Defence civilian jobs, merge Canberra’s national cultural institutions and slash the budget of the National Capital Authority by 40 per cent—and that is just what they were prepared to fess up to before the federal election. Heaven knows what would have happened had they actually been elected.

That approach on the part of Labor is intellectually coherent—even if somewhat short-sighted. Mr Tanner is not the first politician on either side of politics to stake out similar ground, but what he is saying about the size of the Public Service rings hollow. That is made clear by simply sitting here for a few days and listening to what is said by Labor members both here and in the other place. I looked at yesterday’s Hansard to give myself a picture of what Labor members are saying. That perusal of one day of Hansard, from both here and the other place, was very interesting indeed. Let me run through what happened. At 12.50 pm, Senator Stephens called for more extensive public consultation procedures regarding the siting and establishment of nuclear waste facilities. At 2.44 pm, Senator Marshall criticised the lack of any division 1 registered nurses to evaluate resident care in Australian nursing homes. At 3.03 pm, Senator Crossin called for a wider roll-out of non-sniffable fuel. At 3.44 pm, Julia Gillard said the government had squandered the opportunity to invest in schools and hospitals. At 10.07 pm, Senator Hurley said that the government was not spending enough on the Adult Migrant English Program. She also called for the establishment of an Office of Citizenship and an Office of Integration and Multicultural Affairs in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. She also wanted programs which promote respect for democratic values and inclusiveness in schools. At 10.36 pm, Justine Elliott called for a federally funded dental scheme. At 10.46 pm, Steve Georganas said we had not committed sufficient funds towards nursing home accommodation—a view we have heard very often in this place from Senator Jan McLucas.

What do all these views have in common? What do they all add up to? They add up to a tremendous commitment for a future Labor government to spend. Across the board, day in and day out in this place, Labor says the government is not spending enough on health, education, the environment, the arts, infrastructure, sport, aged care, family payments—the list goes on. Name an area and you can be certain that Labor is saying that we are not spending enough money in it. Implicitly, Labor is saying that, in each of those areas, we should be spending more and, therefore, they would spend more. How can Senator McLucas, for example, tell us that we are not putting enough investment into residential aged-care places—as she does regularly in this place—without implicitly promising that Labor would do that?

Here we come to the nub of the argument. If Labor believe that these things need to be done, how do they expect to do them without creating more public servants? Look at every one of those items I have just mentioned: every one of them implicitly or explicitly involves the creation of large numbers of public servants. A new national dental scheme—how many public servants would that entail? A new Office of Integration and Multicultural Affairs in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, more investment in schools and more regulation of nursing homes—all of those add up to more public servants. So we have Mr Tanner saying there are too many public servants under this government, yet apparently every other Labor member seems to be saying we need to create some more public servants in order to provide and pay for better and more extensive programs. It just does not add up. It is simply a case of different members of the Labor Party machine in this country giving different messages to different parts of the electorate depending on the particular sector with which they want to curry favour or the particular image that they want to create of, on the one hand, fiscal rectitude and, on the other, being concerned about the so-called ‘lack’ of services in different parts of the country.

The fact is the record will show—and we can see very clearly this record at work in state Labor governments—that Labor will come to office and spend beyond the community’s capacity to sustain that spending and that at some point or other, either immediately or later, it will come back and cut public services in order to be able to pay for the promises it has foolishly and unsustainably made. We are seeing that today in the ACT. We are seeing that in a whole range of areas of government. We are seeing state government borrowings rise. We can confidently expect all of those things to happen federally if federal Labor is returned in next year’s election.

I am concerned about the impact that will have on the ACT community. I am concerned that Labor continues to push out this deceitful message that it is concerned about protecting public servants—that is, if you speak to the likes of Senator Lundy, Mr McMullan and Ms Annette Ellis. But if you talk to the likes of Mr Tanner, he will tell you that there are far too many public servants and that their number has to be cut. Of course, we have seen the sorts of promises that they have made and will have to make again in order to pathetically attempt to balance the books in this respect. The fact is Canberra has a great deal to fear from a change of government. The party of Bob Menzies—who did so much to develop this city; he built it up as a great city of which all Australians can be proud—will take every opportunity to draw attention to Labor’s double-edged sword and its forked tongue on this question. We will push these issues well and truly to the forefront of the election campaign that will start in the next few months. (Time expired)