The spectre of public service job cuts is likely to dominate the first day of week three of the ACT election campaign, after Labor promised it would maintain the size of the government workforce if re-elected.
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The move seeks to wedge the Liberals on the issue of public service job cuts, a theme which has been the focus of Labor attack ads in the earlier stages of the campaign.
The ads have tried to conflate job cuts inflicted by Liberal governments elsewhere, including federally, with the Canberra Liberals.
Labor has committed to "maintain the size of the ACT public service if re-elected", but also to grow the workforce in areas of health and education.
It has also pledged to ensure wages keep rising to at least match inflation, a less significant commitment, because average wage rises typically increase higher than CPI.
"To ensure Canberrans continue to receive high quality public services and to protect jobs, we will grow the ACTPS in key areas such as health, education, police and emergency services," a spokesman said.
"The ACT Government will also demonstrate best practice procurement to ensure Canberrans working on public projects are also protected."
Meanwhile, reaction continued on Sunday to Labor's proposed integrity package.
Labor has promised to ban developer donations, expand the lobbyist register, introduce real-time reporting, investigate election financing, and create an integrity commissioner with a team of "special investigators", who would look at serious integrity breaches.
The Greens welcomed the package, but described Labor's announcement as a "backflip", which was at odds with recent statements from the party that the ACT did not need an anti-corruption commission.
It is also at odds with Labor-led reforms two years ago, which allowed parties to begin taking money from corporations.
ACT Greens candidate for Ginninderra Indra Esguerra said Labor and the Liberals had teamed up to pass those reforms, which she described as an "appalling" watering down of donation restrictions.
"They created this problem, and now that they have used these last two years to fundraise for the election, Labor has joined our call for a ban on developer donations because they can see it has popular support," Ms Esguerra said.
Both major parties continued to receive large donations from developers in recent weeks. Nick Georgalis, managing director of developer Geocon, made a single cash donation of $10,000 to Labor on September 9, while the Village Building Company donated $3000 to the Canberra Liberals.
The Liberals say they are "open" to donation reforms, but have not made any firm commitment to implementing a similar ban.
Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson has already promised to create an ACT-style ICAC and beef up the auditor-general.
"Donation reform is something we are always open to but more importantly we must have an ICAC," Mr Hanson said.
