Page 1162 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 22 August 1989
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Mr Speaker, as I said, I want to congratulate the Chief Minister for her brave face in the course of this onslaught - all this bad economic news. It takes a special kind of woman to endure this kind of ignominy. I am sure that the rest of us, however, can convey adequately to the people of the ACT the very great pain which this budget is inflicting on the Territory. It has already been amply demonstrated by my colleagues who have already spoken and who, I am sure, will continue to do so, but I am sure that the Chief Minister will continue to show her own special mettle in this matter.
DR KINLOCH (4.18): Mr Speaker, I am just a little confused. Have we reached the discussion of the matter of public importance about the Government's performance during its first 100 days? It does seem to me that that is what we are talking about. So I would rather reserve my comments for when we come to the discussion of the matter of public importance of the 100 days. We do seem to be overlapping mightily in this matter.
MR MOORE (4.19): I would like to make some comments on the Federal budget in the context of its relationship to workers in the ACT. It seems to me that the Federal Labor budget basically ignores what I would call the middle ground for employees. What Labor has done in this budget, as it has done over the last six years, is to look after the very, very wealthy and the powerful in this country, particularly the media magnates, and to look after the powerful building and industrial unions.
One of the ways of doing this, of course, was by the wages accord. One cannot help asking what exactly has happened to the rest of the community, the part of the community that does not quite fit into the concepts of the wages accord. I will tell you what has happened to them. They are the ones who have gone backwards. There has been a transfer of the money that can be earned by people away from the middle ground - the professional people, the middle income earners - to the very wealthy, whose profits we see soaring, and to the tradesmen, the powerful union representatives and their members.
The wages accord method claims that it looks for restraint. I think that that in itself is a very good philosophy and that is why we have been able to pull the wool over the eyes of so many people for so long. The methodology of productivity is appropriate for certain unions and for certain people, but if you happen to be in a service area, if you happen to be a teacher or a nurse or a journalist, if you happen to be a public servant, then in the last years - in all the years of Labor government - you would have watched your earning capacity go backwards.
On a comparative basis in particular, no longer do you have the recognition in terms of status, in terms of your salary position, but in fact you could well have lost almost half
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