Page 3435 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 25 November 1992
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QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Public and Private Sector Enterprises
MR KAINE: I would like to address a question to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, in your budget strategy statement on 16 June this year you said:
... Labor stands for a strong public sector and a thriving private sector.
However, in your policy platform, which you hid from the electors during the election campaign recently, at paragraph 2.2.3 it says that your intention is to:
Encourage the establishment and development of viable public enterprises using nationalisation where appropriate, and forms of social ownership in the ACT and the democratic participation of labour in economic decision making and ownership of enterprises in the ACT.
Which of these two statements do we believe, Chief Minister - your own unilateral budget strategy statement or your Labor Party policy statement?
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank Mr Kaine for the question. It is a fact that the Australian Labor Party publishes its policy document. That document, Madam Speaker, is available for anybody to purchase. The Liberal Party appears to have done so and to somewhat resent it, Madam Speaker. It is a matter of pride for members of the Labor Party that our policies are drawn up by our members, who represent the largest community based party in this Territory, and they are drawn up in public. They are done each year at our annual conference. I think that puts us in marked contrast to some other parties who do have hidden agendas and who do indeed, as we saw with Mr Kennett in Victoria, seek to deceive their electors; to implement immediately after being elected policies which they had failed to mention.
Madam Speaker, if you wish to know what the Labor Government has on its program you need to go to additional documents to the party policy. Mr Kaine has rightly pointed to the budget strategy statement which I made in June of this year and in fact have made each year when I have been responsible for the ACT budget. The strategy statement that I put out states that we do indeed in this Territory need strong public and private sectors, and I stand by that statement. I believe that the actions of this Government in fact bear out that that is what we stand for.
Far from pursuing an ideologically driven and utterly mindless program of privatisation and of slashing the public sector, such as is put forward by the Liberal Party - not just in this Territory, but nationally and in other States, as we have seen, particularly in Victoria - this Government recognises that in fact we do need both a public sector and a private sector in the ACT. Not only does the Government recognise it, but the private sector in the ACT recognise it as well. They know - Mr Kaine and his colleagues will not accept this, but the private sector does - that in the ACT the public sector is essential to the well-being of our economy, and if you slash the public sector the private sector bleeds. Members opposite will not accept that simple economic fact in our Territory.
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