Page 24 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 16 February 1993
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What about some vision? What about multiskilling? What about technicians who drive school buses part time? This is one example where one could save plenty of money. That is how Deane's Buslines and Murrays make school bus runs an economic proposition, and I quote the Canberra Times of Saturday, 12 December 1992. Do not look just at the workers. There is plenty of fat in management as well. You do not have to fire people to get economies. Private enterprise copes with these problems in difficult times through natural attrition and voluntary redundancies.
What about some compassion? In an article in the Canberra Times on Sunday, 24 January 1993, one bus driver lamented that in the last fortnight he had lost $160 in overtime. How about some vision and some compassion? Let us talk to those bus drivers. Let three or four of them give up their overtime and you would create an additional job. How about the cost of motor vehicle inspections, road maintenance and so on, where big savings could be made without costing jobs? There are myriads of other examples, not only in ACTION, where savings could be made. I am not going to abuse the privilege of this house and accuse persons who cannot reply, but I do know where the skeletons are buried, where money can be saved. The Government does not need consultants to advise them about this matter. If they want my advice, it comes free of charge.
It is about time we talked more seriously about the words of the late US President Kennedy, who said, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country". We must get away from the "give me" mentality and, instead, adopt an "I will do" mentality. Australia is still the land of opportunity, but it saddens me to think that we are letting it slip. It is there for the taking, but we as a nation must feel the need to go out and get it. It will not come to us. I feel a great frustration and even sadness that we inhabitants of this wonderful country and marvellous city are missing the opportunities that lie before us.
There is a tremendous level of negativeness throughout the country right now and a despondency about getting on with things. Everything is doom and gloom. It is undeniable that we are experiencing one of our toughest times in history. It is easy to be depressed and it is understandable that hostilities arise, but there must come a time when this kind of reaction is turned into a more positive approach. I have mentioned before in this house that I have experienced some very tough times myself, and by no means do I regard myself as Robinson Crusoe. However, the most important aspect is not how tough things are but how to get out of them.
Here is the crux of my address and this is the rub. We have to get out there together. We have to stand by each other as fellow Australians and create a great nation together. There is untold wealth to be attained and there are many wounds to heal, such as the unforgivably high level of unemployment. I believe that we have, in a sense, to realise that we are at war. We are looking down the barrel at defeat. The foe is ourselves. We are our own worst enemy. Instead of standing beside each other, as we did in the Great War, we are adversaries. People are at each other's throats when they should be standing together. People want more when they should be content with less.
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