Page 834 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
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MR DE DOMENICO: Mr Moore is saying, "Nonsense". A lot of what Mr Moore says is nonsense too, Madam Speaker. Finally, let me say this: Mr Connolly in this house this afternoon said, "I do not know why this MPI has come up, because it was my idea to bring ACTEW to the Estimates Committee". Then he said, "No, it was not my idea; it was Mr Moore's idea".
What Mr Connolly does not realise is that the recently announced increases in electricity and water charges are taxation by stealth. He has gone to the very people the Labor Party purports to represent and said, "We are incompetent. We cannot manage our budget and therefore we are going to allow you to pay for our incompetence". That is all it is. It is taxation by stealth. Mr Connolly knows that it is taxation by stealth, and I think everybody else in this house knows that it is taxation by stealth.
I have one minute to go, Madam Speaker. I note that my colleague Mr Lamont is anxiously waiting to go for the jugular. I invite him to do so; but he must still go out and tell the people of the ACT why, if ACTEW is so massively competent, if we do not need corporatisation, the Government is asking every single person in the ACT to pay excessive water and electricity rates. It is taxation by stealth. Shame on you - shame, shame, shame!
MR LAMONT (4.23): It is good to see that my friend Mr De Domenico has to refer to that refrain that was taken up by hundreds of thousands of Australians when his ideological mate got kicked out of office by the Labor Party in 1983: Shame, shame, shame! And shame it is, Mr De Domenico, when all we get from the Opposition after a three-week adjournment is page 2 of the Bill Stefaniak bottom drawer MPIs. That is all they can come up with.
They trot out this ideologically pure right-wing claptrap, which has seen the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand people put under increasing pressure as their economy collapses. It is collapsing because of the types of policies these people sitting over here would like to visit on the people of Canberra. They are exactly the same policies. If Mr De Domenico thinks New Zealand is such a great edifice for demonstrating what is the proper economic base to follow, he should be over there enjoying the cold showers with 90 per cent of the population this week. That is what his style of micro-economic reform will deliver to this country as it has been delivered in that country.
It is predicated on confrontation, not cooperation. As far as they are concerned, all you have to do is let the mates come in. If they have a ship or a boat or a yacht and they can sail around the south seas, lend them a few extra quid out of their other mate's bank, let them buy into the utilities. What Mr De Domenico should have watched was not Lateline last night, because it is obvious that he missed the point; he should have watched the Four Corners program last Monday night to see what has happened in New Zealand under his brand of Liberal economic reform - exactly the same rubbish that he and his Lamborghini mates on the hill want to bring in here.
I am almost embarrassed to be a member of the Assembly today, when an MPI such as this is put on. They have had three weeks to come up with something that is scintillating, something that is relevant, something that is not just rhetoric. What have they had to do? Mr De Domenico has brought back the garbage bin, minus his mate Mr Stefaniak, but obviously with Mr Stefaniak's MPIs still in it.
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