Greens deputy leader Jo Clay said there had been a genuine conversation with the Canberra Liberals about cutting more executive level jobs in the ACT public service and redirecting staff away from “big business units that aren’t doing very much”.
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Ms Clay told Greens members last week finding areas to cut to improve the budget bottom line was “really, really tricky”, but she pointed growth in executive management in the ACT’s public service under Labor.
“So there was genuine conversation that, actually, probably what you might be doing is going through some of your executive level jobs and big business units that aren’t doing very much and you might be redirecting some of those positions into frontline services,” Ms Clay told the meeting of members, according to people familiar with the conversation.
“That’s the kind of thing but in actual fact we can’t actually tell you where we’d get the money from because negotiations have stopped and we didn’t get that far – it was definitely a fairly significant problem that we would have had to discuss and resolve before you could go into any arrangement.”
ACT Greens deputy leader Jo Clay, left, with party leader Shane Rattenbury. Picture by Karleen Minney
Ms Clay said there might be other new revenue sources the Greens and Liberals could have agreed on.
“And in terms of cuts, cuts is tricky. It is really, really tricky, but probably the best example I can give you is that under the Labor government in the last few years, they’ve invented a new layer of executive management,” Ms Clay is understood to have told members.
The Greens deputy leader claimed Labor had added directors-general and deputy directors-general, along with executive branch managers, to the territory’s public service structure.
Ms Clay also told members the talks with the Liberals had stopped before the parties reached agreement on where to find savings.
“In actual fact, we can’t actually tell you where we’d get the money from because negotiations have stopped and we didn’t get that far – it was definitely a fairly significant problem that we would have had to discuss and resolve before you could go into any arrangement,” she said.
Ms Clay told The Canberra Times the Greens had no desire or intention to reduce the headcount of the ACT’s public service.
“This is the position the Greens hold on the crossbench, and it is a red line we set down in policy discussions with the Canberra Liberals,” Ms Clay said in a statement.
“We do believe it is in Canberra’s interests to strive to make the public service more efficient in terms of output and service delivery, to ensure resourcing reflects community priorities and maximises community benefit.”
Ms Clay said there had been a series of pretty questionable decisions across the highest levels of the territory’s public sector which had concerned the Greens.
“One example is former Labor minister Gordon Ramsay being appointed to lead the ACT government’s Cultural Facilities Corporation, only to create a brand new senior role there for his former political staffer,” she said.
“Many of us are now looking at that series of events and wondering – are these decisions getting good outcomes for the community?
“More layers of executive management came on board in lots of areas when executive directors became executive branch managers and executive group managers in 2018-19. This term’s machinery of government changes still aren’t complete 15 months after they began.
“I’ve heard Labor’s Minister for the Public Service and the Chief Minister talking about the need to remove inefficiencies in the ACTPS but we are yet to see meaningful change.”
A Labor spokesman said the government had not introduced a new layer of executive management.
“Recent machinery of government changes have brought together complementary areas to improve efficiency and have reduced the number of directors-general and deputies,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman said job cuts undermined the quality of advice and community services and arbitrary management cuts would create uncertainty for frontline staff.
“While cheap shots at the public service might make for easy headlines, ACT Labor will always defend the hard-working staff who deliver for our community,” he said.
The Community and Public Sector Union’s ACT regional secretary, Maddy Northam, said the union was deeply concerned by any talk of job cuts in the ACT’s public service.
“It’s alarming that politicians from any party think it’s acceptable to casually float redundancies. These are real people in our community with real families, not numbers on a spreadsheet,” Ms Northam said.
“Cutting public service jobs means cutting services. Fewer workers means longer wait times and worse outcomes for the Canberra community.
“You can’t cut jobs without cutting the services that Canberrans rely on every day.”
“There’ll be fewer executives and there’ll be more people delivering services,” Mr Barr said at the time.
Mr Rattenbury on Friday said the ACT needed to embark on a path towards fiscal repair without austerity, while looking for areas “where you can make savings and efficiencies and some of those are about priorities”.
“Certainly we would not be supporting cuts to key community services for example but there are areas you might look at,” he said.
Asked whether the Greens needed to take responsibility for the state of the budget having sat in cabinet for more than a decade to 2024, Mr Rattenbury said: “I think we’ve seen a significant deterioration since the Greens left the cabinet. The deficit was nothing like it is now when we were in the cabinet.”
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