Senator ALSTON (Minister for Communications and the Arts) —(4.02 p.m.)—Last week Senator Allison, the new Democrats Public Service spokesperson, asked a question about a recent COSBOA study in Cooma on Public Service employment levels. The Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service (Dr Kemp) has provided some additional information, and I seek leave to incorporate this sheet in Hansard .

Leave granted.

The document read as follows—

Last year's budget forecast a decline of 10,500 in APS staffing levels in 1996-97.

The 1997-98 Budget Papers include an estimate based on information from agencies that total staff employed under the Public Service Act will fall by approximately 16,500 between 30 June 1997 and 30 June 1998.

The figure of 16,500 fewer people does not equate with job losses. The figure includes:

   people for whom there is no longer any Commonwealth employment—e.g staff in DAS business units and in areas affected by outsourcing—where a number can be expected to be employed by the successful private sector bidder

   people moving from APS employment to other Commonwealth employment—e.g staff moving from DEETYA to the Public Employer Placement Enterprise (PEPE).

Statistics on APS job losses from centres in regional Australia are unavailable but broad data on the break-up of the voluntary retrenchments from the APS in each State and Territory indicate that the burden is being evenly shared among the States and Territories.

There has been some rationalisation of resources in regional centres by some APS and non-APS Commonwealth agencies as a result of reductions in running costs—these decisions have generally been taken by departments and agencies.

The Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia (COSBOA) data on Cooma provides a break-up of the job losses. The main elements of the 361 job losses are the Snowy Mountains Authority (a Commonwealth/State authority—123 jobs); Great Southern Energy (NSW State power utility—93 jobs); Telstra (Commonwealth GBE—31 jobs); and RTA (State Government authority—30 jobs). Only job losses in Cooma Skillshare (4 jobs) and the Department of Education (2 jobs) look as though they could have a relationship at all with the Australian Public Service.

The conclusions of the COSBOA Report about staffing changes in regional Australia are equivocal. The Report states (at page 150) that

"in some cases, especially in the public sector, the overall direct costs to the nation in handling transfer payments and loss of regional infrastructure for example, may outweigh the direct benefits to the agency concerned. But without solid analysis there is not even a beginning of a way for these decisions to be made".