Page 2614 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 October 1992
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MADAM SPEAKER: Order! Continue, please, Mr De Domenico.
MR DE DOMENICO: Thank you. Even the Government's own forecasts on employment, as I have shown, predict rising unemployment well into 1993. The Government's budget aimed at jobs; yet the first legislation it introduced at this sitting, the occupational health and safety legislation, is really aimed at getting rid of jobs. That is still under debate. It will get rid of jobs.
Mr Lamont: What an absolute load of nonsense!
MR DE DOMENICO: Mr Lamont says, "What an absolute load of nonsense". The Canberra Business Council, the Chamber of Commerce, the Canberra Visitor and Convention Bureau, the tourism industry and every other small business that has written to you and to other members of this Assembly, Mr Lamont, disagree with you vehemently.
Mr Lamont: Exactly the same people who said the same thing when the 20-employee designated work groups came in; exactly the same group of people who now support that legislation.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! I suspect that that interjection was invited a little, but Mr De Domenico does have the floor. Please continue, Mr De Domenico.
Mr Lamont: I do apologise, Madam Speaker. It is just so easy to refute his arguments.
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Lamont, perhaps you could desist from interjecting.
MR DE DOMENICO: Madam Speaker, thank you for your protection. The Government really is not fair dinkum. Ms Follett is laughing and Mr Lamont continues to interject; but the real fact of the matter, Mr Lamont, is that the ACT, under your Government - - -
Mr Lamont: Madam Speaker, I take a point of order. Would you ask the speaker to address the Chair on this, as opposed to other members of the Assembly?
MR DE DOMENICO: Madam Speaker, I raise a point of order. If Mr Lamont continues to interject, perhaps you should do your job and make sure that he is not in this house doing that all the time. I ask you to rule on that point.
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr De Domenico, that is really not a point of order but a point of advice, and I accept it readily. Standing orders 55, 61 and 39, I think, ask people not to interject. Perhaps people could remember that.
MR DE DOMENICO: Notwithstanding what Mr Lamont and others might say from time to time, the facts are that the ACT's unemployment continues to rise under the Labor Government that Mr Lamont so proudly wants to be a part of. The Government has failed. It is not fair dinkum and it has failed to attack the problem. There is no doubt about that. The Government's own Economic Priorities Advisory Committee in May recommended retail hours deregulation and a review and alteration of award conditions in the retail, hospitality and associated service industries. That was issued in May. At page 3 of that report the committee said this:
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