PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (15:00): My question is to the Treasurer. Can he guarantee that the 1,600 Public Service cuts already announced as part of the Mid-Year Budget Review will result in a net decrease in public sector numbers? In the 2006-07 budget, the government announced that it would impose a cap on Public Service numbers but, over the last year alone, the number of public servants has increased by 1,308. Meanwhile, the Treasurer has announced that 1,200 jobs will be cut in 2009-10 as the first round of the 1,600 job cuts announced in the midyear budget.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Minister for Industry and Trade, Minister for Federal/State Relations) (15:00): Thank you. He gives a good Dorothy Dix, too. I have to be a little informative for the shadow minister. I think about 70 per cent of what we spend is spent on wages. It depends on the function and it depends on the government. So, if you increase health funding by, let us say, $100 million, there is a reasonable chance a lot of that will be accounted for by wages. It will be because there are more nurses, more doctors, more administrative support staff, perhaps more cleaners in a hospital, and maybe more hours by existing staff. It is no different in other areas of government expenditure. If we expend more money in disability services or child welfare areas, that largely means more public servants.

Therefore, I cannot give a guarantee that Public Service numbers will be 1,600 fewer at the end of this exercise. I doubt they will be, because we program going forward, as we have done in the past, some substantial improvement in outlays to keep delivering better services. I would hope that the increase would be minimal and that we will see some form of plateauing. However, I cannot predict what will happen past the Carmody review, because the number of further cuts and potential job losses will be a factor of the wage restraint the public sector has shown. So, more wage restraint will equal fewer cuts that we will need to make elsewhere in government. Less wage restraint will make more cuts in government inevitable.

The fact of life in government is that when you spend more money, by definition, you hire more people, because government services are, in the main, not delivered by robots or magic: they are delivered by people who care. That is the point. If you improve services, you will employ more people to deliver services with care and compassion, which is the hallmark of the Rann Labor government.