The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, attacked yesterday an article in The Canberra Times’s suggesting that $60 million could be cut from the Budget without hurting.
She invited the journalists who wrote it, Jack Waterford and Ian Davis, “”if they had the guts to accept”, to do a guided tour of her department so she could show them that there were no functions and special units that were duplicated or produced little in the way of visible results.
She pointed to the tourism unit which had produced higher visitor numbers and greater income for the ACT. She said the Occupational Health and Safety Unit provided a vital function.
Every effort would be made to give a safe workplace to people in the Territory, she said provoking an Opposition interjection: “”You can’t provide a workplace at all . . . ”.
Ms Follett was answering a question from Annette Ellis (Lab) in the Assembly. She said also that the Office of Public Sector Management was not an expensive luxury, but provided tangible results and efficiencies.
The Minister for Health, Wayne Berry, also attacked the article in answer to a Labor Member in Question Time saying moving the hospice location to Calvary could not save $3 million unless “”you could get a hospice for nothing”. As for closing Kambah Health Centre, he said it had been closed for two years.
But he did not care about the article because “”we’re coming from behind as far as The Canberra Times is concerned so we can only win from here on”.