Wendy Weekes hands out a cupcake in party colours to Liberal candidate Jo van der Plaat who wants to take a 6 per cent-plus bite from Labor’s margin in Eden-Monaro at the upcoming federal election. Wendy will manage the Goulburn office during the campaign. Photo: John Thistleton.
Liberal candidate for Eden-Monaro Joanne van der Plaat is reassuring public servants about their job security in the wake of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s pledge to reduce their numbers to save $6 billion.
Opening a campaign office in Goulburn’s main street on Thursday morning (13 March) Ms van der Plaat said Mr Dutton’s recent reference to 36,000 Commonwealth public servants did not refer to the number he planned to cut, but to how many had joined the public service during Labor’s tenure.
Mr Dutton has pledged to reduce numbers and use the $6 billion in savings to match the Government’s $8.5 billion Medicare policy.
Ms van der Plaat said should it be elected, the Coalition would be reviewing public servant positions, but this was no cause for concern.
“I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me in the last week about this who are public servants and there are a lot of public servants in Eden-Monaro, particularly around Queanbeyan, Googong, Jerrabomberra,” she said.
“And after having a chat with me they are completely comfortable,” she said.
The Cooma-based candidate, lawyer and past president of the Law Society of NSW said the Coalition would not touch public servants’ workplace arrangement until it expired in 2027.
She has told public servants once that arrangement comes off they would be free to negotiate, like they always were, and like the private sector does.
“I have friends in the public service who live in Cooma who have their kids in school down there,” she said. “They rang me and said, ‘Does this mean we have to pull the kids out of school and move back to Canberra?’”
She told them no, it did not mean that, and that the Coalition would not undo any current contractual arrangements or agreements that people had.
“But when that comes off we do want to have a look because we know, obviously it has been widely reported, there was a massive explosion of public servants jobs and what are those people doing?” she said.
The Coalition was not out to penalise hard workers in the public or for that matter the private sector, but to use taxpayers’ money responsibly.
Households facing the rising cost of living needed the same responsibility. “I was bought up with, ‘If you don’t have it, you don’t spend it, and if you’ve got it use your money wisely’. I think people out there expect governments to do that,” she said.
Asked how the Coalition would overcome one of the prime contributors to price hikes, insurance, Ms van der Plaat said by tackling inflation, starting with bringing energy prices down.
“People are dropping private health, they are not comprehensively insuring their cars, you name it. Landlords are not taking out landlord insurance and taking a risk,” she said.
If energy prices came down through getting gas back into the system, and a mix of other power sources, all the other costs that people were trying to juggle including insurance would come down.
Meanwhile, a South Coast bus company has made available a large former school bus for Ms van der Plaat to cover Eden-Monaro’s 33,000 square metres, down from 42,000 after the boundary redistribution last year.
“It’s good for people to see my face,” she said. “Coming in as an underdog, when you have an incumbent (Kristy McBain) who has been involved for three or four years, one of the hardest things to do is to say this is who I am, this is what I look like and please come and connect with me.”
- Member for Eden Monaro Kristy McBain will be interviewed for an upcoming story.
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