Page 3328 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
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Mr Berry: You are going to sack 60 people.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, Mr Berry, others outside this place do not take the same narrow, blinkered, ideological view that you take about the need to produce real savings in the system and to trim the size of the public sector work force in the ACT. You are out on a limb. You do not understand what people in the ACT really want. They want a government which will be trim and will be able to deliver services within cost limits.
MRS GRASSBY (4.36): The Appropriation Bill of 1990-91 shows a government which is lacking in any budgetary strategy. As Rosemary Follett said in her speech last week, "This is a lazy government, an uncaring government, whose budget will burden the Canberra community with higher taxes, fewer jobs and services and a reduced standard of living".
The most obvious example of this Government's uncaring attitude is its attack on the ACT education system. Despite repeated requests over the last few months, the Minister for Education, Mr Humphries, failed to justify his school closures. He constantly said, "Wait for the budget and all will be revealed". Well, we have seen the budget and nothing has been revealed.
Mr Humphries has simply come up with another set of figures which once again are open to serious questioning. And what has been Mr Humphries' response to this? He has had so little faith in his own figures that he has established an inquiry to try to justify them. At the same time the community has said they do not want their schools closed, but this has had no effect on this Government. It is all very well for the Chief Minister to tell school communities that they have to bite the bullet. Well, they are prepared to do so. They have offered scores of ways to try to help him balance the budget other than totally closing down, but he is not prepared to listen.
In the area of health, the standards that Canberrans have come to expect are also under attack despite the overwhelming view of the majority of residents of the ACT. This Government simply does not care what people think. Forty-one thousand people signed a petition not to close the Royal Canberra Hospital, and the Government said they did not care. In Mr Duby's portfolio it is interesting to see that $300,000 has been allocated to recycling programs. This is from a Minister who flew in the face of recommendations of the Standing Committee on Conservation, Heritage and Environment inquiry into waste management and closed the Ainslie Transfer Station without any public consultation whatsoever.
Of course, the Ainslie Transfer Station was used frequently by residents of North Canberra and was a successful example of how the community became involved in recycling. Its popularity can be easily judged by the outcry which met Mr
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