Page 1187 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 22 August 1989
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open and consultative government within this Assembly. That is where it should be occurring; not outside necessarily, but here in this Assembly.
Mr Speaker, I will go through the list of so-called achievements of this Government. A whole lot of things have been ignored. As I have said, it has been 100 days of wasted opportunity. Now let us look at some of the things that the Government has promised or has ignored. First of all, there was the promise about preschool funding, abolishing the preschool fee. It did not mention in this litany of achievements that it at the same time cut preschool education by $900,000. There was no mention of that. There was no mention of the cuts to the reading recovery training scheme in this document the Government put out.
They have cut 100 teachers, and this is the Government that promised not to cut education. They are cutting non-government schools by cutting funding to the interest rate subsidy scheme in the order of about eight per cent. Where is the Government's commitment to education there? In health, it is increasing the tax burden on families by whacking a $50 a year tax on families with private health insurance. It is doing nothing to improve the low morale of the health services.
It is doing nothing to recover any of what the Commonwealth Grants Commission identified as overspending in the area of health delivery, the health bureaucracy in this Territory. It is doing nothing about redirecting that towards actual health delivery. It is cutting welfare programs, particularly the ones like the Galilee program already referred to.
Mr Speaker, I am astonished by the things the Government members have said and I am astonished by the audacity they have in claiming credit for a whole series of mismanagement. Look at this list of promises or claims of credit for things that they have achieved: attended the first Premiers Conference and Loan Council; reaffirmed a fundamental commitment; claimed that they have done something by saying they reaffirm this commitment to something.
Mr Stefaniak: It sounds like a solicitor's bill.
MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed. They are establishing a social policy division within the Chief Minister's Department - nothing tangible; throwing public servants at a problem; that is solving the problem. I looked through this document, half expecting to see among the achievements here something like "Sun coming up consistently every day of a 100-day government; birds still singing in trees; weather declining but Government effecting improvement towards late August".
MR SPEAKER: Order! Your time has expired, Mr Humphries.
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