Page 2440 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
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alternative but to go on leave in the next three weeks, unless they have no leave, because they have nothing to contribute to the estimates process. It will show what they propose to do when they introduce the Kaine Fightback package for the people of Canberra.
I find absolutely incredible the conflicting messages coming from them. Mr Kaine is saying, "Ms Follett, you should be borrowing". Mr Humphries is saying to the Minister, "You should be allowing the police and so on to get more money". Mr Kaine says, "But you have to have smaller government". Then Mr Humphries says, "But you have to have smaller government. You have to cut back on government spending". I cannot follow how they can have any objection to the responsible budget issued this Tuesday.
MR DE DOMENICO (4.09): Let me try now to get the debate back to where it ought to have been before Mr Lamont stood. We are debating the Follett Labor Government's budget, not Fightback, or Mesopotamia or anywhere else. I do not need to go to any ethnic television producer or film producer to get my quotes, Madam Speaker, as did Mr Lamont in respect of Mr Kaine. I will go to the Canberra Times, which is closer at hand and is more reflective of what the people of Canberra believe than is a Spanish, Italian or French film director. Let me read what the Canberra Times said, Madam Speaker. I quote:
Yesterday's ACT Budget is the work of a government that is incompetent or paralysed - or both.
Let me repeat that, Madam Speaker: The budget is the work of "a government that is incompetent or paralysed - or both". That was said not by any movie director but by the Canberra Times. It went on, though, Madam Speaker, and I quote:
The Budget is an exercise in fiddling the figures; in postponing decisions that must be made if the ACT, in two or three years' time, is to have anything approaching an acceptable level of public goods and services; and in failing to take advantage of the slim opportunities, economic and political, which exist.
That is not from an ethnic film producer, or any other film producer, Mr Lamont, but from the Canberra Times. I will repeat that first line because it bears repeating time and time again:
Yesterday's ACT Budget is the work of a government that is incompetent or paralysed - or both.
How true those words are. As Mr Kaine said, what a wonderful opportunity it was for you people on the other side to display some vision and to do something. But what did you do? You did nothing. I do not blame you for that, because you have very good teachers who are teaching you what to do - the mob up on the hill there under Keating. I will shove it down your throats time and time again: We are in the worst recession that we have ever had in this country, not because of any Liberal government, not because of any Fightback, but because of the grim reaper up there, Paul Keating. We have the highest level of unemployed in Australian history, with one million people on the street, and in your budget you have done nothing that is going to improve that. That is a fact of life. I know that you are all reeling and cringing.
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