Mr MILLS - 2002-08-22
Yesterday you wrote to all public servants regarding your budget. However, yesterday you were also confused as to how many public servants your government actually employs. Surely you can tell us how many letters you sent out to public servants to help verify the current numbers or, at the very least, confirm to this House that the numbers you have printed in your budget books are correct?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the fact that sometimes the other side of the House takes a couple of goes to learn something. We saw that in the Opposition Leader’s response to the budget yesterday, which was totally wrong. Yesterday in this place we dealt with this issue, and I will deal with it again. It is an important issue about how we count the number of public servants. As a legacy from when you mob were in, there is no confident way that we have, at this stage, of counting how many public servants we have. I have asked our new Public Service Commissioner, John Kirwan, to get that in place so that we can, on a monthly basis, see how many public servants we have and how we measure that against full-time equivalents. That is happening. Stop doing conspiracy theories …
Members interjecting.
Ms MARTIN: Stop doing conspiracy theories. We have had your leader say you have knocked off 600. You forgot to count PowerWater.
Mr BURKE: A point of order, Madam Speaker! The Chief Minister is misleading this House by suggesting there was no accurate way of counting public servants in the past. The figures were published monthly by the Commissioner for Public Service.
Madam SPEAKER: There is no point of order. Chief Minister, you must address the question.
Ms MARTIN: What we need to do is to have confidence in the numbers that are being counted, and there certainly have been great differences in how those numbers were counted. We are going to get it right. Let me put on the record here, that when we restructured the public sector in November last year, I said - and I stand here and repeat it - there would be a reduction in executive management, and we have seen that across the public sector. I also said, that with the amalgamations of agencies, in some cases there would be a duplication of positions, and in time we would see a reduction of those numbers. We have seen that happening. I cannot give you the figures yet. However, unlike the previous administration who, early in the 1990s, knocked off 1500 public servants - knocked them off through the ERC process, and then knocked them off again through Planning for Growth, and did it in an absolutely ham-fisted way. When we restructured the public sector, we did it well and effectively.
Every month we will be producing those figures for the public sector. What we are concentrating on is an effective and well supported public sector, with real opportunities for career and skills development for our public servants. I am proud to stand in here and say that is our commitment to our public service.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the fact that sometimes the other side of the House takes a couple of goes to learn something. We saw that in the Opposition Leader’s response to the budget yesterday, which was totally wrong. Yesterday in this place we dealt with this issue, and I will deal with it again. It is an important issue about how we count the number of public servants. As a legacy from when you mob were in, there is no confident way that we have, at this stage, of counting how many public servants we have. I have asked our new Public Service Commissioner, John Kirwan, to get that in place so that we can, on a monthly basis, see how many public servants we have and how we measure that against full-time equivalents. That is happening. Stop doing conspiracy theories …
Members interjecting.
Ms MARTIN: Stop doing conspiracy theories. We have had your leader say you have knocked off 600. You forgot to count PowerWater.
Mr BURKE: A point of order, Madam Speaker! The Chief Minister is misleading this House by suggesting there was no accurate way of counting public servants in the past. The figures were published monthly by the Commissioner for Public Service.
Madam SPEAKER: There is no point of order. Chief Minister, you must address the question.
Ms MARTIN: What we need to do is to have confidence in the numbers that are being counted, and there certainly have been great differences in how those numbers were counted. We are going to get it right. Let me put on the record here, that when we restructured the public sector in November last year, I said - and I stand here and repeat it - there would be a reduction in executive management, and we have seen that across the public sector. I also said, that with the amalgamations of agencies, in some cases there would be a duplication of positions, and in time we would see a reduction of those numbers. We have seen that happening. I cannot give you the figures yet. However, unlike the previous administration who, early in the 1990s, knocked off 1500 public servants - knocked them off through the ERC process, and then knocked them off again through Planning for Growth, and did it in an absolutely ham-fisted way. When we restructured the public sector, we did it well and effectively.
Every month we will be producing those figures for the public sector. What we are concentrating on is an effective and well supported public sector, with real opportunities for career and skills development for our public servants. I am proud to stand in here and say that is our commitment to our public service.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016