Page 3239 - Week 11 - Thursday, 13 September 1990
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themselves. The Treasurer informed us of $15m of expenditure reductions, but where are they? What functions will be affected by the $2m cut in education? Where will the $2m expenditure cut in TAFE come from? How will the general saving of 4 per cent on administrative functions be achieved? This is a budget of questions rather than of answers. It is a budget from a lazy government - a government that is too lazy to talk to the community that it governs. And, in fact, it is a government that is too lazy even to think up its own new policy proposals.
I believe that one of the major questions which arise out of this budget is: what is the economic strategy of this Government? Indeed, does it have a strategy at all? One could argue that it has a consultant driven strategy, a report based strategy. All we get from this Government is more and more commissioned reports and no action. No-one could argue that there is a coherent economic strategy in this budget. The Treasurer makes much of his four budgetary goals, but nowhere does he say how he will go about implementing those goals. The closest thing that we have had to an economic or budgetary strategy is the Priorities Review Board report. That report has been totally discredited in the community and publicly rejected by the Government itself. The only conclusion which can be drawn is that the Priorities Review Board report is still the driving force behind this Government. The Government is still hell-bent on attacking the public sector, privatising public services such as health and education and slashing public sector jobs.
At least 400 public sector jobs will go as a result of this budget and the Treasurer has indicated that next year even more jobs will be lost. We are well on the way to the 3,000 job cuts the Treasurer has said that he wants. The Treasurer assures us that no-one will be sacked, but it has to be said that no-one will be employed either. In 1990-91 over $6m is going to be spent in paying people out of the public service. This is a disaster for Canberra at a time when the employment outlook is very gloomy. There is some bad news hidden very deep in Mr Kaine's budget.
This budget predicts that the ACT will move from having the lowest unemployment in the country to being closer to the national average. What Mr Kaine is predicting is an unemployment disaster for Canberra, which he is helping to produce with his public sector cuts. Unemployment in Canberra at the end of June was 7,800, or 5 per cent. The Federal budget predicts that the national figure will be 7 per cent by June next year. Mr Kaine says that the ACT will move closer to that figure. In other words, close to 11,300 people will be unemployed, which is an increase of up to 45 per cent. There will be 3,500 more people unemployed, and Mr Kaine is contributing to the problem by cutting employment himself.
I would ask: what will Canberra's children do about a job? There will certainly be no help for them from this
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