Page 1653 - Week 08 - Thursday, 28 September 1989
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This budget is clearly the product of a minority government attempting to preserve its shaky hold on power by trying to sell the electorate the idea that it is giving us a "steady as it goes" economic climate. But there are different ways of mortgaging the future. A deficit budget is one, and I congratulate Ms Follett for avoiding this easy but dangerous option. Yet in her zeal to do so she has clutched at a straw which may be nonetheless damaging. The budget's erratic notions of what we should be cutting back on and what we should be spending manages only to raise threats about the future of the ACT social conditions.
I note, Mr Speaker, that the Treasurer cannot do me the courtesy of listening to my speech about her budget. She thinks that mentioning the mere words "a balanced budget" will be enough to solve all our ills. It is not enough and, Ms Follett, I have to say that it is not good enough in this budget process. Ms Follett wants us to believe that social justice considerations are, and I quote her party's word, "paramount". We were expected to believe this during the consultation process on a draft budget, which was a straightforward attack on the future of our children, on our access to health services and on the employment opportunities for women. The force of this attack has moderated little, and social justice for women, the ailing and our children is becoming sadly more remote.
The so-called consultation process created a significant degree of anxiety and insecurity among the potential victims: the teachers and nurses facing unemployment; the children and the ill facing reduced services. In itself, this was a blow to social justice. Even if the threatened cuts had not taken place, that disruption to the lives and hopes of many people over the past few weeks did more than enough damage.
Despite a few cosmetic adjustments to proposed cuts, the damage will continue. The whole circumstances in which real social justice can be developed have been undermined. It is no use Ms Follett presenting the people of Canberra with neatly packaged descriptions of social justice initiatives when the real agenda is clear. It is no use her telling us about the coat of fresh paint she is going to apply to the kitchen wall while she is busily burning down the house.
Ms Follett attempts to justify her selective cuts to the two most important services in the ACT by referring to the imperatives dictated by an old and inappropriate set of Grants Commission conclusions. We can only wonder what the Grants Commission would have made of our ability to pay our own way in the light of the Commonwealth's plundering of our resources and its shonky financial dealings with the ACT.
More importantly, the Government's approach to overfunding is the kind of response we have come to expect from the
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