Page 656 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 23 March 1993
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I could go on and on. I could talk about labour market reforms. I could talk about, for example, ACTTAB, a very profitable operation that this Minister is going to blow out of the water - not because of any reasonable reason, but because of this radical ideological bent that manifests itself in this ACT Government. The people of Canberra have learnt one lesson, as have the people of Australia. They will not accept, in fact they will reject outright, any government of any political persuasion that does not do what the people want. They will reject anything that is too radical. This is the most radical Labor government ever seen in this country. In fact, it is the most radical government we have ever seen. The people of the ACT will realise that at the next election.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (4.14): As I listened to Mr Kaine and Mr De Domenico, from the other side of the chamber, something struck me about their speeches. Mr Kaine stood up and, at one stage in his speech, after his usual knocking style, said, "What will the Government do?". He said about six times, on six or seven different topics perhaps, "What will the Government do?". At no time did he come up with any proposal of his own. At no time did he say what the Opposition would suggest. There was not even a single constructive proposal.
Mr De Domenico, just a moment ago, said that he was not going to do that. He said that he was going to be constructive and he was going to say what should be done. In fact, he did not. He made one constructive, perhaps not constructive, but clear, statement, namely, that maybe - he did not quite say it this way - we should get into an auction situation with States like Queensland to ensure that we get high-tech industries. Then he went onto two or three more items. But, in fact, he was not offering anything positive. He was not saying what we should do. It was, again, knock the Government on occupational health and safety and a couple of other matters. So at no time in this 20 to 30 minutes of Opposition debate did we have anything solid and constructive from the Opposition.
I do not find that surprising. I do not find that surprising at all, because in fact the quality of the Government's proposals, its legislation and its administration is such that there is not much for them to pick over. There is nothing much there for them to suggest. It has all been taken away from them. The people of the ACT decided that about a year ago, just as the people around Australia decided that Dr Hewson did not have enough to offer. I would agree with Mr De Domenico in the comment he made on the Federal election - that the Liberal Party appeared too radical. With that apparent radicalism, I think there was a very significant element of destruction which the Australian community saw and voted against.
I interjected, when Mr Berry was speaking, to use the word "incremental", and that is very much the key to progressive government. I once heard a speech by Don Dunstan, a former Premier of South Australia, who said that any government had to keep ahead of the community and had to provide leadership, but it could never get very far ahead of the community. It had to be half a step ahead, otherwise the community got lost behind. It is that element of leadership, knowing what the progress we want is, the ability to inform and educate the community, to have the community accept those proposals, that has been, I think, a mark of recent Labor governments.
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