Page 1163 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 3 April 1990
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Tight Commonwealth fiscal policies and the downturn in construction are having a dramatic effect on the ACT. Our economic prospects are not good. Is it reasonable to compound the difficulties with excessive cuts of our own? I think not.
In delivering the budget last year, I said that our selective savings and revenue measures were part of a strategy of transition to State-type funding levels. I envisaged that transition as a gradual process of adjustment that would take some years - a transition that would continue after the Commonwealth financial guarantee ends. My attempt to manage a gradual transition with the least possible impact on the Canberra community stands in stark contrast to Mr Kaine's short, sharp attack. The sudden and massive cuts which he promises will destabilise our economy and devastate our community services.
Mr Kaine talked about how his policies would produce 3,000 new jobs per year in order to prevent an increase in unemployment. He said this would be achieved by providing the right environment for private sector job creation. Well, I ask Mr Kaine to tell me how this will be achieved, given that he is proposing to cut somewhere around 1,000 ACT government jobs per year. That means he will require private sector employment growth of at least 4,000 jobs per year, without even considering the flow-on effects of his public sector cuts.
I do not believe that Mr Kaine can achieve this type of job growth with contractionary policies. We must look at the demand side of the economy as well as the supply side. This is just another small hindrance to his ideologically based approach to attacking the public sector and protecting his well-off mates. I do not accept that these archaic economic policies are responsible and I believe that the people of Canberra will reject them as well. We need economic policies which will not only stimulate job creation, but will also help us ride out the rough patches in our economy, such as the one we presently face.
Mr Speaker, this budget strategy is not a budget strategy for the people of Canberra. It attacks a great lifestyle which people want protected. This approach will not be accepted by the people of Canberra. The strategy has no balance. It is based on blind ideology. It is an attack on those least able to defend themselves and it protects those most well off. It is, in fact, a true Liberal Party strategy.
The outcome of Mr Kaine's budget approach is all too clear. More Canberra people will face poverty. More Canberra people will find work impossible to come by. More will have to take out private health insurance. More will choose to send their children to private schools because of the uncertainty in the government school system. On top of that, we will face rate rises as well.
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