Page 3463 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 25 November 1992
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Schedule - Part II
ACT Legislative Assembly
Proposed expenditure - Division 10 - ACT Legislative Assembly, $3,714,600 - agreed to.
Chief Minister's Department
Proposed expenditure - Division 20 - ACT Corporate Management, $14,705,100.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.16): Madam Speaker, I move:
That the proposed expenditure for Division 20, ACT Corporate Management of the Chief Minister's Department, be reduced by $10.
I do not move this amendment in order to raise any question of confidence in the Government. They may be aware of parliamentary procedure that such an amendment usually indicates some lack of confidence in the Government, but that is not my intention. Neither do I move to reduce the appropriation by $10 frivolously. I do so, Madam Speaker, as a means of registering my concern about the lack of performance of the Labor Executive as expressed in this budget.
Madam Speaker, one might ask why I arrived at the value of $10? Traditionally, it used to be one pound - one quid in the old days - and I figured that a 1964 quid in 1992 is probably worth about 5c, so it was hardly worth the trouble. I upped the ante and chose a nice round figure of $10.
Mr Moore: So, you want it to be $14,705,090, not $14,705,100?
MR KAINE: That is right. Madam Speaker, the Government's record during the past year leaves me, at least, with considerable foreboding and trepidation for the well-being of Canberra for the next couple of years and beyond. There has been no performance to criticise. There has been no strategy to argue with. There is no financial plan to come to terms with. In fact, there is no long-term plan at all. Essentially, the Government has abdicated, for all practical purposes, and exhibits no desire to confront the real problems facing our community. The Ministers of the Government stand up day after day in this Assembly contemptuously lecturing the Opposition, in their patronising manner, about all manner of things; but it is all ephemeral. It has no substance, and you can see right through it.
The sick ACT economy cries out for remedies. Small business is suffering the effects of the worst recession in 60 years. Young people face long periods of unemployment - if they are lucky enough eventually to find work at all. Fifty-six per cent of our young people between 15 and 19 were unemployed in September, and the Government wrung its hands and said that they had training programs in place. In October the rate of unemployed youth was down to 42 per cent, and the Government congratulated itself on its successful policies that were, they claimed, improving the lot of our young people. I find no comfort, Madam Speaker, in a reduction of 14 per cent when it means that 42 per cent of young people are still without work, still relying on social welfare, not getting a start in life, but being driven to despair. I think that the 42 per cent of our young people out there still unemployed find no comfort in it either.
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