NOW we’re well into the Federal election campaign, let’s talk about two of the most insidious policies of the Turnbull Liberal government: the attempt to reduce weekend penalty rates and the continuing damaging cuts to the public service.

The Liberal Party’s obsession with cutting weekend penalty rates for working people who rely on the few extra dollars is unconscionable. It is simply an attack on the lowest-paid, most-vulnerable people in our community.

This policy is supported by many Canberra Liberal parliamentarians, including local senator Zed Seselja who last year said that the Liberal Party needed the “courage” to cut weekend penalty rates.

There is no courage in forcing minimum-wage workers to take a pay cut, just cruelty.

Eight in 10 Canberrans support keeping weekend penalty rates as they are. This is because everyone knows that working on weekends, public holidays and late in the evening is unsociable.

Most workers who rely on penalty rates are casuals or have short-term contracts, no access to sick leave and many work multiple jobs to earn enough to pay their rent and buy food and fuel. They are an invisible army, cleaning offices, preparing food and making deliveries.

A cut to weekend penalty rates is a cut that these working people can’t afford and don’t deserve. It is deeply saddening that the senator, elected to represent all Canberrans, insists on supporting these cruel cuts that only benefit big businesses.

If you work a 38-hour week and rely on weekend penalty rates, then under Turnbull’s plan, you will lose a significant amount of money. A cleaner working for cleaning company Spotless on full-time pay earning $726.54 per week would be worse-off by $86 with a cut to penalty rates.

Canberra is a public service town. The Federal public service is the engine room for our local economy, driving growth in the private sector and creating service and construction jobs.

The continuing damaging cuts by the Federal government to the public service will not only mean deteriorating quality and reliability, but will seriously impact the ACT’s community and economy.

The Liberal Party’s war on the public service started in 2014 with more than 13,000 jobs wrecked, 7000 in Canberra. The 2015 Budget worsened those cuts and, despite promises that the job cuts were at an end, this year’s Budget has seen an additional 4500 public service jobs wrecked.

Since the election of the Abbott-Turnbull government, 18,000 public service jobs have been wrecked, almost half of them based in Canberra. Despite all the talk in the past week of jobs, growth and innovation which the Liberal Party has cheered as important, national institutions have been hammered and people’s jobs destroyed.

Hidden in the 2016 Budget are insidious plans to privatise large swathes of the public service, and even more cuts, disguised as “scoping studies”. Meanwhile, the government is pretending to strengthen corporate and banking regulators such as ASIC and APRA, which have already had thousands of staff sacked and retrenched.

The public servants whose jobs have been destroyed by the Liberal government are real people, with kids in local schools, who support the local shops and who have to pay off their mortgages. While conservative politicians and commentators demonise public servants, the truth is that every public servant I have met is proud that they work to provide essential services for their fellow Australians.

Canberrans, whether Federal public servants or not, don’t deserve a government, or a senator, that has an ideological hatred of the public service. Australians everywhere rely on these services, and we need a Federal government that is willing to invest in our public service and invest in Canberra.