Page 2452 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
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I am surprised at the lack of confidence that the Labor Government has exhibited in making that decision. It keeps telling us that it expects to govern in this Territory for a long time to come, but where is the indication of long-term decision making? Where is the indication that you have put in place measures which will save pain at some point in the future, particularly when that $120m reduction really starts to bite? Frankly, there is not one shred of evidence that you have done that. The challenge has been passed up and we find ourselves borrowing, once again, from the future; borrowing, if you like, from the needs of our own children.
Mr Cornwell: Back to the future.
MR HUMPHRIES: Back to the future, indeed. In the Canberra Times, Ian Davis described this budget as a "coward's sleight of hand". I cannot go past quoting the first few paragraphs of that comment. He wrote:
If a passer-by sees a house on fire and fails to raise the alarm and exposes the occupants to danger then he is culpable.
Not as culpable as the person who lit the fire but culpable nonetheless.
In yesterday's Budget the Follett Government also failed to act and is deserving of condemnation for its inaction.
You can't say that yesterday's Budget contains any monumentally bad decisions.
Its weakness is that it contains virtually no real decisions at all.
Madam Speaker, that has been the opinion of most of the commentators who have come forward to comment on this budget - that it is good as far as it goes; but it leaves untouched the questions that a government in its position, a government which has just faced an election and won it, ought to have faced up to. It has not faced up to those fundamental questions and it stands condemned for not doing that.
Madam Speaker, one of the virtues which have been sung about this budget is that it is supposed to have created employment. It is supposed to be a jobs budget, a budget that will generate a secure future for at least some of the people of the ACT who have lived with the drudgery and misery of unemployment. I welcome that focus, at least as far as the rhetoric goes. It is a valid concern at a time like this. But the question I ask myself is: How many jobs have actually been created, overall, by this budget? The budget speech, unfortunately, is less than clear on that subject. It talks about a lot of jobs. In fact, the first jobs it mentions are on page 10, where it talks about 2,000 jobs; but it is referring there to the Commonwealth Government's promise of 2,000 jobs with respect to York Park. When we get down to the ACT Government jobs, as far as I can see there are 300 jobs to be created through the capital works program, with a flow-on of about 220 jobs in other sectors - let us say 500 jobs.
If we take out those Commonwealth and private sector initiatives and are left with just those 500 jobs, we have to ask ourselves what offsets there are in this budget to job creation. We found out today, in answer to a question from Mr Kaine, that there are offsets which have to be placed side by side with the jobs
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