Page 2666 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 October 1992
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As I mentioned in the Assembly recently, some time ago we had a situation in Australia where one per cent of the wealth of Australia was held by, I think, 10 per cent of the population. Now 10 per cent of the wealth is held by one per cent of the population, or some incredible turnaround of that degree. I think it could be said that the ALP under its agenda could not do more to create hardship for business, to create unemployment, if it were doing it deliberately.
MR LAMONT (11.47): Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise to participate in this debate today. I believe that it is incumbent upon those of us who have worked extensively in the private sector over a great deal of time to correct the misimpressions that have been given by speeches such as the one we have just had the unfortunate experience of hearing.
The realities are far different from those espoused by Mr Stevenson and, indeed, the Liberal "frightpack" policy that was debated by Mr De Domenico a little earlier. The realities are that we are talking about 12 per cent of the work force in the ACT who are not currently covered by the same or similar provisions. That 12 per cent of the entire work force in the ACT are currently denied that which 88 per cent of the work force have been able to avail themselves of for a considerable period of time. It is not creeping utopianism, as Mr Stevenson would have us believe, that brings this matter before the Assembly today. It is an improvement to what is the community standard for 12 per cent of the work force. It is no more and no less than that. It is bringing a very small minority of the work force into a proper position of equality with the rest of the work force in the ACT.
What may surprise Mr Stevenson is that this is a process that has seen the standard of living enjoyed in this country, and generally around the world, brought to the level it is. Through debate and discussion by forward thinking people, conditions or standards of living have been determined and maintained and improved since the Industrial Revolution. The process Mr Stevenson elaborated on and discussed would have seen us still with 12-year-old children in the pits of England. That is what Mr Stevenson is suggesting should be the way we as a community treat these matters.
Mr Stevenson: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: Has not the member to relate his remarks to what I have said and not present mistruths about what I have said?
MADAM SPEAKER: I am sorry, Mr Stevenson; I do not understand that point of order. Would you please continue, Mr Lamont.
MR LAMONT: I was drawing a quite proper conclusion, which is the only conclusion I believe can be drawn from the way Mr Stevenson has presented his argument this morning, as to why we should deny 12 per cent of the work force in the ACT these quite proper provisions in the Government's Bill. I believe that it is a Bill that any government in this country would be proud to have on its legislative program.
Where the quite proper net of the Industrial Relations Commission has failed to pick up a group of workers in the ACT, we as a government have seen the obligation we have, and the legislation before us has been introduced to right that quite improper wrong. That is what this argument is all about. It is not about small business, because those areas that are award free in the ACT are, in general,
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