Page 784 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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Mr Speaker, I refute most strongly Mrs Grassby's assertion that the Government was maintaining an obvious policy of deliberately running down the Trade Waste operations and selling off assets. It simply is not true. This is yet another example of the Opposition's lack of intellectual capacity and misrepresentation of the facts.
In conclusion, Mr Speaker, I would reiterate that this Government, after consideration of all of the facts, made a correct decision to sell the government Trade Waste Service and moved quickly to implement that decision. Effectively subsidising the continued operation of such a service with public moneys was a situation which could not be allowed to continue. The cost to the taxpayer was unreasonable and we have removed it.
Mrs Grassby deliberately laced her tirade with Labor ideological claptrap, using such words as "union bashing" and "flogging off public assets to mates". They are direct quotes from her words. Mr Speaker, there has been no union bashing under this Government. I have an open relationship and an open door policy with the Trades and Labour Council and the unions. I know that the members of the Opposition hate that, but it is a fact. We have a degree of cooperation unprecedented in the ACT between government and the trade unions - and it was unprecedented, particularly in the times of the ersatz Labor Government that we had a couple of years ago. Problems, and potential problems, are discussed around the negotiating table constantly.
Neither has there been any fire sale, which the Labor Opposition is so fond of talking about; nor has there been any instance of flogging off public assets to our mates. On the contrary, we are preserving the public interest by creating government owned corporations to make them more productive in the public interest. But, when public assets are no longer assets, Mr Speaker, and become liabilities, and unnecessary liabilities at that, then this Government will remove them from the public domain without any hesitation whatsoever, and that is what we did with the Trade Waste Service.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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