Page 3556 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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This tactic to expand construction will ultimately work to the detriment of the 3,000-odd on the waiting list. This issue needs to be watched carefully and the Government will need to reconsider the wisdom of pushing out into some of the newer suburbs before the social infrastructure is ready. In our view, the trust should have largely quarantined new construction to areas with an existing social infrastructure. The trust could ensure that there were sufficient reserves of land set aside, or a forward purchasing block strategy developed, so that social homogeneity in newer suburbs in Gungahlin and South Tuggeranong could be maintained at a later date.
Mr Acting Speaker, on employment, we are, like my colleague Mr Kaine, unable to find an employment strategy in this budget. In a country which daily is assailed with graphic accounts of unemployment, why is there no employment strategy in this budget? We in the Rally looked for it; we cannot find it. There are some throwaways; for example, in answer to a question on Tuesday Ms Follett said that there were 12 trainees in the public service, yet her budget press release says that the number of trainees in the public service will double to 40.
This number and this inaccuracy, somewhere, typifies the glib presentation of this budget - the patronising attempt to sell a transparently misleading budget. This budget, frankly, is a disappointment to us in the Rally. More importantly and most of all, it is a disappointment to self-government. It is a betrayal of self-government. It is a failure to tackle the big issues.
MR DUBY (3.50): Mr Acting Speaker - - -
Mr Kaine: You have 43 minutes.
MR DUBY: I do not think I will need 43 minutes.
Mr Wood: Tell us about the Hare-Clark Independence Party.
MR DUBY: That is far more interesting than this budget. Mr Acting Speaker, I guess we should have known better than to expect from Ms Follett a budget that demonstrated some economic and financial management skills. Then again, I guess we also should have known, when we looked at the 1989 budget that she brought down, what to expect. I think, as Mr Kaine aptly pointed out in his address, we have more of the same. We have a budget that simply does not address the issues that are important here in the ACT at this time.
Mr Connolly: I raise a point of order, Mr Acting Speaker. I presume that Mr Duby is addressing the house in his role as a party leader. I wonder whether he would advise the house which party it is that he is currently leading.
MR DUBY: I think Mr Connolly is trying to be a party pooper.
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