Ms CARNEY - 2006-05-02
In the current financial year, you are predicting your wages bill will blow out by $98m - Budget Paper No 2 - which means you have spent $98m more than you expected last year. I remind you that the Auditor-General has already reprimanded you for doing the same last year, about $100m. My question is: why do you keep underestimating your wages bill so badly?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the Leader of the Opposition for her question. Much has been said by the opposition over recent weeks and there is some confusion about the figures they put out from day to another day.
In relation to a big slab of the costs, you need to look at the effect the - I have a lot of trouble with this word, but there are such people as actuaries and they do actuarial work – that is, they look at the books of governments. They did this mid-last year for the Northern Territory government. They looked at the number of people in the public sector; the number who were in the old Northern Territory Government and Public Authorities Superannuation Scheme – NTGPASS; the number of people in the Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme, the old CSS, who are in the Territory or work for the Territory government; how they are going through into retirement; what is the effect in terms of them living longer; what is the effect of more of them taking pensions rather than lump sum payments, which is the case going forward; and a whole range of facts and indicators that come into play when these actuaries go about their work.
The upshot of that is that there was a quite dramatic revision to the liabilities facing this government all of the way through to the year 2060. That is when it is expected that the final payments under CSS and NTGPASS would be finally expended.
We make no secret of overall staff numbers. In fact, we put the figures on the website on a monthly basis under the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment, and there has been growth. However, this government has been extraordinarily busy in its first term, getting health, education and police back to an even keel. Each one was a basket case when we were elected in 2001.
Police could not take annual leave; they were buying leave back because there were not enough coppers on deck to cover leave requirements, so you had low morale and a stressed police force. The minister for Police worked very hard with the O’Sullivan review to bring those numbers up. The final 30 of the increased 200 police numbers will come on deck this next year. Are we going to get rid of any of those 200 extra police? I think not, given the work and the expenditure to get them there. We will keep them there.
Are we going to get rid of any of the 212 extra nurses that the Minister for Health has seen come into the health system? I think not. Are we going to get rid of any of the extra 120 or 130 over formula teachers in the Education department? I think not.
Has there been growth with executive contracts and executives over all? Yes, there has. Not as much as the opposition would allege, and why is that? Well, if you are out there building policy, if you are out there rebuilding the key service delivery agencies of government as we have been, you have to have a little bit of policy grunt. You have to have a few senior people around to direct and draw these programs together, and see them implemented into the public sector.
I have stood in this House before and said numbers are probably not going to remain at those levels into the short-term, middle-term and long-term future. We have a quite high attrition rate in the public sector. Numbers can be worked down over time, and they will be. It will not be done with redundancies; it will not be done with buying people out. It is not necessary. The attrition rate alone takes care of that. You are never going to get the people to leave that you can do without, so there always has to be a replacement factor there. Bit by bit, it will smooth out and, if it takes 18 months, two years, so be it. I and the government see numbers coming down over the middle- and longer-term.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the Leader of the Opposition for her question. Much has been said by the opposition over recent weeks and there is some confusion about the figures they put out from day to another day.
In relation to a big slab of the costs, you need to look at the effect the - I have a lot of trouble with this word, but there are such people as actuaries and they do actuarial work – that is, they look at the books of governments. They did this mid-last year for the Northern Territory government. They looked at the number of people in the public sector; the number who were in the old Northern Territory Government and Public Authorities Superannuation Scheme – NTGPASS; the number of people in the Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme, the old CSS, who are in the Territory or work for the Territory government; how they are going through into retirement; what is the effect in terms of them living longer; what is the effect of more of them taking pensions rather than lump sum payments, which is the case going forward; and a whole range of facts and indicators that come into play when these actuaries go about their work.
The upshot of that is that there was a quite dramatic revision to the liabilities facing this government all of the way through to the year 2060. That is when it is expected that the final payments under CSS and NTGPASS would be finally expended.
We make no secret of overall staff numbers. In fact, we put the figures on the website on a monthly basis under the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment, and there has been growth. However, this government has been extraordinarily busy in its first term, getting health, education and police back to an even keel. Each one was a basket case when we were elected in 2001.
Police could not take annual leave; they were buying leave back because there were not enough coppers on deck to cover leave requirements, so you had low morale and a stressed police force. The minister for Police worked very hard with the O’Sullivan review to bring those numbers up. The final 30 of the increased 200 police numbers will come on deck this next year. Are we going to get rid of any of those 200 extra police? I think not, given the work and the expenditure to get them there. We will keep them there.
Are we going to get rid of any of the 212 extra nurses that the Minister for Health has seen come into the health system? I think not. Are we going to get rid of any of the extra 120 or 130 over formula teachers in the Education department? I think not.
Has there been growth with executive contracts and executives over all? Yes, there has. Not as much as the opposition would allege, and why is that? Well, if you are out there building policy, if you are out there rebuilding the key service delivery agencies of government as we have been, you have to have a little bit of policy grunt. You have to have a few senior people around to direct and draw these programs together, and see them implemented into the public sector.
I have stood in this House before and said numbers are probably not going to remain at those levels into the short-term, middle-term and long-term future. We have a quite high attrition rate in the public sector. Numbers can be worked down over time, and they will be. It will not be done with redundancies; it will not be done with buying people out. It is not necessary. The attrition rate alone takes care of that. You are never going to get the people to leave that you can do without, so there always has to be a replacement factor there. Bit by bit, it will smooth out and, if it takes 18 months, two years, so be it. I and the government see numbers coming down over the middle- and longer-term.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016