Page 196 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 1990
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the clear problems associated with the fiscus of the ACT in the future. It was a matter of urgency, to which the people opposite paid lip service but did very little about. Talk is cheap, but here we find a Chief Minister who is prepared to bite the bullet and take appropriate action to set in train a chain of events that will at least establish how the taxpayers' dollar - the dollar that you and I, Mr Speaker, and every other member of this community in Canberra, plus, of course, the residents of Australia as a whole pay - that we are provided to run this Territory is properly and effectively used.
I think that is important, and I think that the Chief Minister is to be commended for taking on this strong role in this area. It is a pity that the previous leader of the Government, who now sits on the Opposition benches and who I am sure will remain there for a while, was not prepared, as she was not prepared to do on a number of other issues, to grasp the nettle and make the hard decisions in relation to what was required for the people of the ACT and the people of Australia who are also, as we well know, contributing to the operation of this national capital.
Mr Speaker, I think it is appropriate to remind members, in closing, that it was the previous Government which was not prepared to take the hard action. We are prepared to do so, and this is not the first occasion on which we will see development of programs in the ACT for the benefit of the people of the ACT, with good economies in mind.
MR STEVENSON (11.58): I commend the Alliance policy in taking action that needs to be taken. It takes courage for a politician to stand up and mention that money will be saved and put a figure on the numbers of jobs involved. The Chief Minister had the courage to do that and deserves to be commended for it. There should be more of it around Australia, because every dollar that government spends is a dollar that the taxpayer cannot spend. It is the only solution to the problems that Australia faces. Someone has to stop spending the public money. It is not a never-ending well at the end of a rainbow. It is good to see that finally in this Assembly someone has said that he will do something and has taken some direct action along those lines. I heard the Chief Minister make the statement very clearly that jobs will not be taken away, that it will be done through attrition over a longer period than the life of this current Assembly.
When we talk about jobs not being there in the public sector, one must acknowledge that if the Government is not taking taxpayers' money to give it to public servants the taxpayers must have it. If the taxpayers have it, that means that there can be an increase in the private sector. That is the only solution for the problems that Canberra is starting to face and will increasingly face as the Federal Government continues to break its promise of full funding of the ACT for three years. If action is not taken, there will be hard times ahead for people in the ACT. Once
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