chrisbourke.com.au

The Legislative Assembly debated and passed my motion last night condemning Mr Abbott’s planned cuts to the Australian Public Service and the devastating impact they will have on Canberrans.

Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey are proudly promising to abolish up to 20,000 public service jobs which could be up to a quarter of the ACT’s Federal public service workforce. 

It will hit Canberrans in every street – our neighbours, our friends, our sons and daughters.  The effect would not just be here in Canberra but across the border in Queanbeyan, in Yass, in Goulburn, Bungendore and Braidwood and places in between.

The roll-on effect to private enterprise will be catastrophic to the builder, the baker and the policy maker, with rising unemployment, more bankruptcies and the scrambling of the financial nest eggs of many Canberra families.

Cutting public service jobs by natural attrition will have a disproportionate effect on young people with no hiring of young job seekers or new graduates.

I also worry about Mr Abbott’s cuts will hit people working in Commonwealth agencies in my electorate of Ginninderra including the Australian Institute of Sport, the Sports Commission, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Comsuper.

The people make a great contribution to our community and it would be a tragedy to see them decimated or transferred piecemeal to Sydney or Melbourne to satisfy Mr Abbott’s ideological whims.

His anti-Canberra bias has me wondering if Mr Abbott already planning, like his mentor John Howard, to become the King of Kirribilli, shunning the lodge in Canberra.

It is time the Canberra Liberals stopped just acting as an outpost of the federal Liberals and began representing Canberrans.

The speech I gave in the Assembly is here.