Page 78 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 May 1989
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Those housing review matters must extend from public to private housing issues, from interest rates to the subsidies and the emergency housing routines of this Territory. That inquiry is a matter of priority, and the Rally is pleased to note that Mrs Grassby has already set a consultative mechanism afoot in that area.
The Rally is here in government because it rejects power and ideology as the basis for governments of any democratic body. The Rally, for example, rejects tedious arguments about occupational health legislation as relating to ideological issues to do with trade unionism on one hand and the preservation of capital on the other.
The Rally sees that legislation, which is lacking in this Territory and which is present throughout the rest of Australia, as a priority in government. The Rally also acknowledges the reasonable concerns of small business with respect to the impact of the occupational health and safety legislation which the Chief Minister has indicated is a priority. The Rally is consulting with small business and, as the election process showed, has considerable support within the retailing sector of this city.
Moving to economic issues alluded to in the Chief Minister's speech, the Rally believes that Canberra cannot continue to be a concession city. It is not a preferential place to live and the poor press which this Assembly, this electoral process, found nationally must be dispensed with by active, cooperative work of the kind mentioned by the Liberal leader, Mr Kaine, in his address.
The Rally endorses calls for the properly planned development of the Australian Capital Territory. The Rally was one of the first political parties in this Territory to endorse the very fast train project, as it does at this time as well. The Rally endorses full and active review of the Canberra tourist bureau's activities and wishes to see tourism made a major, clean industry of the Territory.
The Rally has no objection to the development of high technology industries in this Territory. It believes, contrary to some expressions, that there may well be the capacity to make direct grants to high technology industry based groups that wish to come to this Territory and that if we can avoid the smokestacking of this Territory we will be doing a single practical service to environmental issues that affect us all. We heard that the inversion problem in this Territory is becoming serious and that there will be continuing issues to do with the climate of the ACT. The Rally looks to an innovative and active allocation of funds for research and development in the environmental area of the ACT to ensure, for example, that catalytic conversion of smoke flue wastes in this Territory, which are largely unattended to, scandalously unattended to, are attended to as a matter of priority with the assistance of groups from possibly the United Kingdom and Scandinavia.
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