Page 2439 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
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policy and your philosophy really mean. They are also suggesting that there be a $13.6m cut from Primary Industries. The list goes on: $34m from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; $14m from Foreign Affairs; $6m from Finance in the ACT. How about this one, Mr De Domenico? The policies you support will mean a $3m cut out of Tourism and Aviation in the ACT. That is what you are supporting in your "frightpack".
All this comes to a grand total of $514m, which your policy, Mr Kaine, the Fightback policy, which we all know will be a disaster for the ACT, proposes in direct cuts out of the ACT. That is what they are proposing as far as the ACT economy is concerned. That $514m translates into over 1,000 public sector positions. And get this, Mr Kaine: This reduction of 1,000 in the public sector would result in the loss of about 550 additional positions in the private sector. That is the Kentucky Colonel's recipe - give us an additional 1,550 unemployed in the ACT. That is what he is proposing - a jump of more than one per cent in the ACT's current level of unemployment.
Even if we accepted the small-minded, feeble-bodied philosophy encapsulated in Fightback, which says that the Federal public sector has to be slashed, the fact is that the Liberals are not pursuing their slashing task equitably but will be making the people of Canberra the scapegoats for their master plan. What about their hateful rhetoric? Remember the kneecapping recommended by Peter Reith? This modern day minority-baiting is certainly backed up by the figures. The Fightback statement notes that there will be a dramatic reduction in what it refers to as "central bureaucratic regulation" and an end to accountability requirements for the TAFE and non-government schools areas. It is interesting to note - I will be surprised if this is denied - that nowhere in Fightback is there reference to cutting existing education initiatives. Therefore, the main avenue for making the $173m cut in the national education budget proposed by Dr Hewson, and I understand supported by the ACT Liberals, will come from central office cuts.
Mrs Carnell: Yes.
MR LAMONT: You are supporting $173m being taken out of our economy here in the ACT. Mrs Carnell has said yes, with much glee. So while the ACT typically accounts for about 24.4 per cent of the Commonwealth public sector, we can expect that the ACT will feel the brunt of cuts of around $129.75m, or 75 per cent. And this Opposition have the hide to get up here this afternoon and condemn a responsible budget by the Follett Labor Government!
The same is true in Employment and Training. We can expect that the greatest portion of the Liberals' $300m cuts - perhaps $225m - will be borne here in the ACT. Industrial Relations shows us just how savage the translation of the Hewson rhetoric - the rhetoric supported by Mr Kaine and the Liberals - will be for the ACT. The Liberals propose abolishing the workplace reform program, the union restructuring program, and the workplace culture program. Reductions of 50 per cent in the industrial relations development and policy development programs and a raft of other cuts mean that, of the coalition's planned $79m cut in this area, the ACT can expect to shoulder more than $68.6m worth.
This is the real story of the response of these people opposite to the responsible Follett Labor budget. They have been too scared to come out and say what they would do to the economy in the ACT. I said at the beginning that it is a case of the more things change the more they remain the same. The Liberals have no
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