Page 2401 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 6 August 1991
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There will be an added impost on tenants who usually, in this and most other communities, are those who are in a lesser financial position than those who own property, so it will tax those with the least.
Mr Connolly: This is nonsense - absolute nonsense. It is looking after the interests of the landlords.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Speaker, we hear the protests from the other side. They are stung by this. Taxing landlords has immediate ideological attraction to the Socialist Left. If Mr Connolly wants to hold his position in the Right, he would be well advised to tread the fence on this because I can tell you that there are very heavy moves in the Labor right-wing camp about this left ideological idiosyncrasy in the budget strategy. It is a funny little idiosyncrasy. It is significant, it is important, but it is a very strong pointer to how the Left will operate within government, if it gets into government again after February 1992. Mr Speaker, it therefore is a litmus, a warning, to us that there is not going to be consultation when ideology is involved; it will just roll in and be dropped on the community.
The other matter that is missing from this budget strategy statement from a social justice point of view and from a community interest point of view is that, as was alluded to in speeches in this Assembly when the Alliance Government fell, Ms Follett does not address how she is going to fund new policy proposals that were being developed under community consultation by the former Government. Those proposals were particularly in the youth sector and community support for the aged and the infirm.
Mr Speaker, there is hardly a mention in the Labor Government's budget strategy statement, apart from a few throwaway lines, of social justice. There are a few words on youth employment, but no solution is offered; there is a final word promising consultation. This is a very thin document; it is shorter than the Cabinet submission on which it is founded and which some of us recall. The vital issue that Ms Follett must face in finalising her budget is the need to cover gaps in services, which have existed since self-government was imposed upon us. There are significant gaps.
There were new policy proposals for a grief and bereavement service which our community needs. That is a tack-on service that an established community agency could handle. A number of them - I will not name them - would offer that service that is needed in this community. The youth street link and youth support schemes are not going to be funded under this budget strategy. They are all going to fall by the wayside. The program that we had built up, particularly in my ministry and in the health area, is falling by the wayside. That is a significant part of this strategy. I believe that Ms Follett is slipping that through and trying to sugar the pill.
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