Page 1464 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 1 May 1990
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at ACTION, and at the special duty workshop in particular, were so concerned about the privatisation rumours that they held a stop-work meeting a few weeks ago. I addressed the meetings and advised them that the Labor Party opposed privatisation. We found out it was true because he left his notes behind and there they were - my God! The whole of Canberra now knows that it was true, that I was not rumourmongering or scaremongering; it was true. We know that. Does the Government still claim that this was scaremongering?
Why, then, does the Government's own resource review of the ACT Government's fleet say that "the ACTION special duty vehicle workshop should be wound down and closed as soon as practicable"? Why does it go on to say that the new arrangement should take effect from 1 July 1990? It is time for the Government to come clean on this and other issues. What will Mr Duby do to protect the interests of the workers of his department? Little, I am quite sure.
MR DUBY (Minister for Finance and Urban Services) (9.17): Mr Speaker, how refreshing it was to hear Mrs Grassby in full flight, providing us with an erudite expose of Labor's lack of fiscal and financial expertise. This veiled attack was supposed to be - - -
Mr Berry: I did not think it was veiled.
MR DUBY: It was a veiled attack on the budget strategy statement because I do not think it addressed it once. Instead we had to listen to Mrs Grassby's waffle. Mind you, it was very entertaining waffle, Mrs Grassby, I must admit. When the points come down for the speeches tonight I am sure you are going to win hands down for the most entertaining.
Mr Jensen: And the loudest.
MR DUBY: And the loudest, too. We heard, as I said, nothing of substance from Mrs Grassby except a call for a workshop-led recovery of the ACT, something which I cannot quite fathom myself. The Chief Minister tried to interject about some notes that were stolen from a meeting which he had in good faith with those members. Of course, Mr Speaker, we all remember the editorial in the Canberra Times when the people who stole these documents leaked them. The editorial said, "How amazing". We have been led to believe that the Chief Minister is wielding a knife, is going to cut into the flesh, and when we read the comments that the Chief Minister has made in the margins of that report, what do we find? We find a reasoned argument and a questioning mind. We find a mind that says, "Prove that point. I don't quite accept this point. Perhaps we need facts and figures on that point".
Mr Speaker, is that the mind of a troglodyte, someone who is going to return us to the Dark Ages, someone who has got the mind of a supposed capital "L" Liberal, someone who is
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