Page 868 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 25 July 1989
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apprenticeship scheme, which could see 115 apprentices out of work.
The problems involved in this very serious issue are complex. At present, the interest rate issue is not being adequately addressed by the Labor Government, federally or locally. That is one of the most urgent concerns this Assembly and Australia must face - the Labor governments' inactivity is quite frightening and shameful. Mr Speaker, my colleague Mrs Nolan will talk to you of what this Government, and indeed this Assembly, can do and should be doing to help solve this crisis in Canberra.
MR COLLAERY (4.11): Mr Speaker, given Mr Stefaniak's commitment to this issue - and that is obviously genuine and very, very sincere, and we can all endorse much of what he says - it seems strange that the Liberal Party gave up the chance of government in the ACT and did not take the opportunity to correct all those ills that my friend addressed. Mr Speaker, what are required are tintack solutions, at both Federal and Territory-State level.
The base causes of the current mortgage crisis lie with Mr Keating and his decision to deliberately increase interest rates and deliberately inflict this trauma upon the community out of a desire to do some balancing of his books, in a short-term attempt to ensure that the economy looked a little better and that inflation rates looked a little better so that his own image, taken by Moodys, as a Treasurer was preserved and that the great trading partners of the Australian Labor Party in federal office were looked after by virtue of those economic measures.
Mr Speaker, the much broader requirements of the nation lie in the dollar value, with the questions as to whether the dollar should remain floating and there should not be some partial weighting. One will recall that on a morning radio program recently the Chief Minister's personal chief adviser, Mr Webb, proposed such a measure. When you have so much dissension amongst the young minds and brains of the Labor Party, you can imagine the confusion at the top on the other hill at the moment.
That confusion in that headlong decision to embark upon a suppressing cycle on interest rates, and an anti-inflationary process which impacted on those paying mortgage loans, will obviously throw the Australian Labor Party out of office at the next election. What we need to hear from Mr Stefaniak is that concrete measures will be put forward by the possible alternative Federal government for mortgage interest rates. That is the overall wide stage, Mr Speaker, for interest rates within the ACT.
At Federal level we have not heard Mr Peacock come forward with his answer to Mr Keating's deliberate trauma forced upon the home mortgage payers of this community. Mr Speaker, the trauma extends now, through mismanagement, to the retail business sector, and some of the big fellows are
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