My questions are to the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service and Cabinet. They go to the critical issues of the delivery of government services and the accountability of government. An essential part of good government is the need for a strong, professional and well-resourced Public Service. The role of public servants is critical in our democratic system. Their responsibilities include providing frank and fearless advice to government, managing public finances and multibillion dollar programs, and day-to-day service delivery and interaction with the Australian people. Labor value the is role of the Australian Public Service. That is because Labor believes in the role of government in delivering a more prosperous and productive economy in a fairer and more just society. By contrast, the Liberals and Nationals have entrenched ideological hostility to the role of government. So it comes as no surprise that the Liberal government have diminished and devalued the role of the Public Service. They have cut thousands of Public Service jobs, including in front line service delivery. They've contracted out more and more Public Service functions to expensive private sector consultants. They've presided over major fiascos when it comes to value for money in government administration. They are led by a Prime Minister who has failed to enforce his own standards of ministerial conduct—a failure which has eroded standards of accountability and integrity and eroded the level of public trust in government institutions.
People in my electorate rely heavily on government services like education, health care, social security and disability support services. They've been telling me that the level and quality of the services have been deteriorating under this government and that the cuts to services are hurting them in their everyday lives. Since being elected, this Liberal government has cut nearly 15,000 jobs from government agencies, including Medicare, Centrelink and the Department of Home Affairs. In the last six years, the Liberals have cut nearly 10 per cent of the jobs in the APS, even though Australia's population has grown by nearly 10 per cent over this period. The need for public services is increasing as our population grows and ages, yet the government keeps running down the services.
In its election policies, the government announced a further $1.5 billion in cuts to departmental funding over the forward estimates. This will mean a further erosion of the quality and level of services provided to the community. The impact of diminished service quality is real and felt by ordinary Australians every day. The Liberals have cut more than 5,000 jobs from Centrelink. This has driven a blowout in processing times for age pensions, which sees thousands of seniors running down their savings as they wait six months or more for their pension.
The Liberals have botched the implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and this means people with disabilities are waiting up to a year for their plan to be finalised. The Liberals have cut thousands of jobs from the Department of Human Services while spending hundreds of millions of dollars on labour hire contractors to staff compliance functions and call centres run by private firms. The result is that more than 46 million phone calls from Australians seeking to access basic entitlements and services went unanswered in 2017-18. Let me repeat that: in 2017-18, 46 million phone calls to government services such as Centrelink went unanswered.
And last weekend The Canberra Times reported that Australia's national scientific research agency, CSIRO, has been forced to tell Australia's next generation of scientists to get an ABN, as it tries to work around the government's staffing caps by hiring new talent as external contractors.
This is insanity. The government likes to tell us it knows how to manage money, yet we've seen major fiascos when it comes to value for money and standards of accountability in the management of government contracts. The government's incompetence and inability to secure value for money in major contracts has been revealed repeatedly by the Auditor-General. We have seen $423 million in contracts for garrison services in Papua New Guinea issued, with no public tender process, to a company with a beach shack as its headquarters; a scathing report by the Auditor-General in 2016-17 on contract management in the Immigration portfolio; and the shonky decision to award $443 million to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
My questions to the minister are: How many Public Service jobs will go under the government's latest $1.5 billion in cuts to departmental funding? What impact will these job losses have on the delivery of services to the Australian people? Will he apologise to the thousands of pensioners and NDIS families in my electorate who are forced to wait for essential services and answers because of this government's chronic cuts?
You can view my speech here