Page 3344 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 24 November 1992
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MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.21): This is, in fact, a genuine matter of public importance, because I believe that it is a question of survival for our nation, as well as for the ACT, that our means of production be marshalled and better used in the interests of our society than they have been in recent years. As part of that, any mindless opposition to reform or change, no matter how beneficial it might be, simply cannot be tolerated. The kind of mindless, lemming-like actions currently being taken on knee-jerk decisions of the trade union officials across Australia, condoned by some unthinking Labor politicians such as our own Chief Minister, simply cannot be permitted to take place in today's world. There is too much at stake for that kind of knee-jerk, off the top of the head reaction.
Mr Berry: You would put them in gaol; that is what you would do.
MR KAINE: What would you do? The answer is nothing, as usual. Philosophies of the Left that may well have been justifiable in the 1920s and 1930s have outgrown their usefulness, and I submit that they have outgrown their relevance in today's world. We cannot, as a society, simply afford to allow some of those outmoded philosophies and concepts to govern our outcomes. By that I mean such concepts as those often expressed by the Labor Left over the road here about the masses being exploited by the capitalists. That was last century. I would like our Labor opponents across the floor here to come into the twentieth century and understand the world that we live in today. It is not like that, and it has not been like that for a long time. There are very few people in Australia, I believe, that maintain that that is the case.
Madam Speaker, the ACT Government must look at general worldwide conditions that impact on the ACT, just as they do everywhere else, and they must look at our own local circumstances, and from that develop a strategy to carry our community into the twenty-first century in conditions of financial security. If they do not want the rest of Australia to come along with us, that is another matter. But I am more concerned about what is happening here, and I am concerned about what this Follett Government is failing to do at the moment.
The vacuum that currently exists in the Follett Government's policy portfolio simply has to be filled. There is a vacuum when it comes to industrial relations and how to organise ourselves to move into the twenty-first century with some security for ACT people. Mr Berry, the so-called Minister for Industrial Relations, as expected, rejects this idea. He will hide behind what the Commonwealth Labor Government does. He says, "We cannot be out of step with everybody else, so if everybody else is screwing up their economies we have to do the same". The evidence suggests that for the last 10 or 15 years Labor governments across Australia have been doing just that. Just have a look at Victoria. Have a look at South Australia. Have a look at what Nick Greiner inherited in New South Wales a few years ago. Have a look at what is happening in Western Australia.
We cannot any longer be hoodwinked into thinking that this 10-year-old tired Labor Government at the Federal level has any solutions to our problem. They have created the problem; they certainly have no solutions to it. Nor, I submit, does our local Labor Government. We will see no initiatives, no action, from this Minister and this Follett Government on this issue, just as with all the other major issues that are on the table. Mr Berry says that things will be okay under Labor. He does not say how. He does not say what
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