Page 2292 - Week 08 - Friday, 21 June 1991
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I would ask the Chief Minister and the Ministers of the new Government to look very seriously at that legislative program - the legislation that was ready in many ways to put on the table - and, unless they find some major deficiency in it, and I do not believe that they will, to put that legislation on the table and let us get it dealt with quickly, as the Alliance Government would have done in the autumn session.
Mr Speaker, no doubt there is a great deal that other members of the Assembly will want to draw from the Chief Minister's statement. On longer reflection, I am sure that there will be other things that I will want to say; but I believe that there is much in it that needs to be commented upon now, rather than waiting another six or eight weeks or until the Assembly next meets. I believe that I should, as far as I am able, comment on those matters now. I look forward with great interest to the continuing debate on this matter when we reconvene.
MR COLLAERY (4.24): Mr Speaker, I welcome many of the directions stated by the Chief Minister in this document and, like Mr Kaine, I take issue with some of the inferences where perhaps the Chief Minister could have been a little more generous. I especially applaud the statement that Ms Follett's Government does not see social justice as an add-on, as some kind of soft option, or as something to be considered only after a decision has been reached on other grounds.
Of course, central to the Cabinet budget deliberations is the necessity to recognise that the economic rationalism which is sweeping our coordinating departments and treasuries, and which has become a modern credo in this country in the 1980s, needs to be put in perspective. For many governments in this country, firstly deliberately, and later through the sheer prioritisation for survival, as is occurring in Victoria and in South Australia, it has effectively displaced that notion that social justice is not an add-on and that one of the primary parts of the budget to be considered is those new policy proposals for funding necessary to secure that share of government concern for those in the least advantaged situation in our society.
Mr Speaker, the social justice performance of the Alliance Government, excluding perhaps on the schools issue, cannot be assailed, and I note that Ms Follett has not chosen to tackle the former Government on that issue. If Mr Kaine had had a little more patience and had put a couple of his issues on the backburner for even a week, the Alliance Government may well have introduced another 30 Bills. A list of those would have capped the performance in that area.
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