Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have heard a lot from Labor over the last week about Queensland public service cuts. There is no doubt that Campbell Newman's slash-and-burn approach to the budget will have a devastating impact on the Queensland public service and on Queenslanders. What we do not hear so much about from the federal Labor government is the impact of the Treasurer's budget cuts on the Commonwealth Public Service and on the country—the ACT in particular.

There are around 160,000 employees of the Australian Public Service, and 38 per cent of those, or 61,000, are employed here in the ACT. Their livelihoods are being sacrificed in the name of producing a budget surplus. There are huge savings available in the budget which would not impact on jobs. We could look at the diesel fuel rebate given to wealthy mining and resource companies, who can well afford to pay for their own fuel. We could change superannuation concessions. We could look at plugging the hole that is left by the government's cave-in to the miners on the resource super profits tax, now the MRRT.

Instead, this year's budget has allocated staffing reductions of 4,200 full-time equivalent jobs across the APS. The Canberra Times has modelled that 12,000 APS jobs will be lost over the next three years, before the bureaucracy starts to grow again. The ATO will be hardest hit, with 1,039, or five per cent, of its staff losing their jobs. DHS will lose 470, on top of 2,000 from 2011. DEEWR lost 500 because of the efficiency dividend, the Department of Health and Ageing lost 370, the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency lost 300 and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet lost 40.

This is all despite Labor's 2010 election promise to Canberra that the overall level of employment would be maintained. In addition to these job losses, the efficiency dividend has increased from 1.5 per cent to a whopping four per cent this financial year, which will have a huge impact on service delivery and nation building and will particularly affect our cultural institutions.

Added to the strain of the efficiency dividend will be the huge cutback in grant programs and funding projects that the APS manages, delivers or oversees. This will give a future government, of either Liberal or Labor persuasion, more room to lay off a great deal of public servants. For example, just yesterday, the Clean Technology Investment Program was suspended. It provided energy efficiency grants for manufacturers and rural food processors, and its future is uncertain. It is these types of programs that the Australian Public Service does so well, and it is their expertise that will be lost if grant programs are abandoned or jobs are lost. We rely on the Australian Public Service's professionalism to ensure the best value for public money is obtained.

What must make it even more frustrating for the ACT Public Service is that this surplus is a mirage—by bringing forward spending a year or deferring it a year. For instance, the dirtiest coal generators managed to get $1 billion in cash up-front this financial year for carbon price effects on their asset values, in exchange for no payment in a budget surplus year, with forgone public revenue in the years after the surplus year.

For those employed in our national cultural institutions, the National Gallery, the National Museum, the National Library and the National Film and Sound Archive, among others, the Greens were able to organise for a $40 million injection to offset the philistine-inducing efficiency dividend. These places are great for our nation, for tourism and for the ACT economy. The Greens won the battle to exempt cultural institutions from the new four per cent efficiency dividend; however, future budget years expose them, because it is a cash refund, not an exemption. But we will be watching every budget closely. These minimal savings do not justify the damage they wreak on our places of cultural pride and joy, especially when other means to obtain revenue are available.

There is no doubt that, unless we address the Commonwealth's revenue problem, we will be looking down the barrel of more Public Service cuts. The Greens are doing everything we can to convince the government to address the revenue problem. We want to plug the gap in the mining tax. We have so far successfully opposed big business tax cuts. We are looking at ways to make savings by ending corporate welfare such as diesel fuel rebates. It should not be the case that when one of us goes to the pump we pay 38c a litre tax but when a wealthy mining corporation go there they pay no tax.

We will stand shoulder to shoulder with the public sector union and public servants who are seeking to prevent further job losses, because we know that a strong Public Service means a stronger and fairer ACT and a stronger and fairer Australia. One must be consistent; one cannot be hypocritical. If it is bad to cut public service jobs in Queensland, it is bad to cut them in the ACT. (Time expired)

House adjourned at 20:01