Page 3832 - Week 14 - Thursday, 10 December 1992
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Mr Kaine: Wayne and David will not have a job when they lose their jobs here.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is right. There go the jobs of Mr Lamont and Mr Berry in their former lives. Madam Speaker, these people over here who have spoken for the Government - Mr Lamont and Mr Berry - are both supporting the present position of their Government. They are both opposing these reforms, these inevitable reforms, in industrial relations because they have benefited from these arrangements in the past. Their power, their influence in the industrial scene in this city and in this country, and that of people like them in this country, has flowed from the centralised, entrenched, rigid power structures which have given unions the capacity to control events in the past. Their position has depended on compulsory unionism and closed shops. That is what it has come from. That is now under threat and they are worried. They are really sweating about this.
Madam Speaker, we have heard a lot about Victoria and how dastardly this Government of Victoria is for daring to take on union power and daring to deal decisively with the problems that face that jurisdiction. Let us have one brief look for a moment at the context of what is going on in Victoria. Victoria is in a position probably worse than any government at any time in the history of Australian nationhood has faced. I will give you an example of that. If each of the States in the Commonwealth were to expend all their budget expenditure for a given year in debt reduction it would take, for example, the Queensland Government one-and-a-half years of total budget expenditure to eliminate its debt. It would take the Government of New South Wales three-and-a-half years to eliminate its debt. What about Victoria? Madam Speaker, it would take the Government of Victoria 111 years of budget expenditure to eliminate the debt that it inherited from the Kirner/Cain Labor Government. What a disgrace! And you want to know why the Victorian Government is taking strong action.
Mr Berry: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. There was so much noise from the other side that I could not hear Mr Humphries telling us about the ACT figures. They just made so much noise. If there was a bit of quiet I might be able to hear him talk about the ACT figures.
MR HUMPHRIES: You do not want to hear. Madam Speaker, I will repeat it for Mr Berry's benefit. It would take the people of Victoria 111 years, if they were to spend every penny that the Government raises in that State each year, to pay back the debt they have inherited from the Labor Government. That is a disgrace. That is why Jeff Kennett is having to take very extreme measures to bring that State back into some sense of control and reality.
Madam Speaker, we support the right of unions and unionists to strike, but in their own time, on their own money, and using their own form of transport, not public facilities and public infrastructure, to make their point, as was the case last Monday. Madam Speaker, those opposite know that what we are talking about is the way of the future.
MADAM SPEAKER: The time for the discussion has all but expired.
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