Page 821 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
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acknowledges that the way ahead is difficult. There are no easy solutions to the problems that we face - Commonwealth cutbacks, national recession and a legacy of unsustainably high costs. If I may reiterate our strategy to meet this challenge, Madam Speaker, we will be maintaining services to the community, and especially to alleviate the lot of people most in need. We will do this by balancing our recurrent budgets, reviewing our revenue sources, constraining borrowings and seeking greater efficiency in all areas of government activity, including the utilisation of land. Madam Speaker, we are equal to the challenge, and we are confident that the people of the ACT support us in our task. I present the following paper:
Budget Strategy Statement - Ministerial statement, 19 May 1992.
I move:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
Debate (on motion by Mr Kaine) adjourned.
PUBLIC UTILITIES - MICRO-ECONOMIC REFORM
Discussion of Matter of Public Importance
MADAM SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Mr Westende proposing that a matter of public importance be submitted to the Assembly for discussion, namely:
Failure of the Government to implement micro-economic reform measures in connection with public utilities that would have minimised taxation and charges.
MR WESTENDE (3.33): Madam Speaker, it absolutely amazes me that this Government can continue to ignore plain commonsense. While it continues to do so, it either stumbles from one blunder to the next or pays a kind of lip-service to reform. It is time the Government caught up with the times and started to turn its attention to much needed micro-reforms by corporatising or privatising its public utilities. Clearly, it has been the experience right around the world that government simply cannot run business enterprises as efficiently and competitively as private enterprise can.
It staggers me that, when something is so glaringly obvious, this Government chooses the path of obstinacy or pig-headedness. When it comes to contemplating anything that smacks of privatisation or corporatisation, it goes on the defensive. What a change it would be if the Government would acknowledge that there just may be something in what we are advocating. Whichever way you look at it, and I have said it many times before, this Government is totally bereft of imagination and commitment. It obviously and sadly lacks commonsense and just plain business acumen in the running of its own businesses. This does not surprise me any more.
I must say that when I became a member of this Assembly I had some hope that, on at least some of the more important issues before us, the Assembly, the Government and the Opposition could act in a bipartisan manner and achieve major progress. However, sadly and regrettably, it seems that this Government
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