Page 758 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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MR LAMONT (3.34): I would like to continue for my 10 minutes.
Mr Humphries: You have the same speech, have you?
MR LAMONT: No, it is not the same speech, Mr Humphries. I have been somewhat less generous to the Opposition than the Chief Minister has been so far in her address.
Mr Cornwell: We would not expect anything more from you.
MR LAMONT: No, you should not expect anything else either, because I think it is about time that it was told in this chamber like it is as far as you people are concerned. Madam Speaker, unemployment is too high. It is way too high. There is no mystery in this. There is no grey cloud floating around when somebody says that unemployment is too high. I have said it before and I will say it again; unemployment is too high. But it is also a fact, Madam Speaker, that Australia has just had a Federal election in which one of the main issues was unemployment and how best to tackle it. The Liberals, in particular those opposite, offered one prescription. Labor offered another. The Opposition can rant and rave and carry on all they like about unemployment. The fact is that their prescription for solving unemployment has been totally rejected by the people in this country, and in particular by the people in the ACT.
Unemployment is too high. You see, I can say it again. I can say it repeatedly, as you do, ad nauseam. I can continue to say it, but when you continue to say it all you succeed in doing is to trivialise the human tragedy of unemployment and expose your own political cynicism in your contempt for the unemployed. What those opposite do not understand, or deliberately choose to ignore, is that the ritual incantation is as useless as their perpetual hand wringing, which is all they have done in the last 12 months. That is all they did in the lead-up to the last election, and that is all they are doing this afternoon. The people of Australia and the people of Canberra, in particular, have rejected their confrontationist, union bashing policies lock, stock and barrel. It is time they stopped this ritual chant and got back to the drawing board and came up with acceptable alternative solutions, if they can.
Madam Speaker, there was a terrific letter in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday which made the point that if the Liberals want to believe that the only thing that lost them the last election was a scare campaign against the GST we, the ALP, should let them do that. If you believe that the only thing that lost you the last election campaign was the scare campaign about the GST, you should continue to believe it, and we should encourage you in that belief because you will pursue this blind alley to certain defeat in the Federal election in 1996. The GST may have been one of the biggest single factors, but it was part of a wider vision - the outdated, un-Australian, Thatcherite vision which blames unemployment on the unemployed. I will go on to point out exactly how they have perpetuated this in the policies that they have stood up with in this Assembly, particularly in the last session, and tried to perpetrate on the people in the ACT. It was not the GST but the vision of Reagan and Bush's Los Angeles which cost you victory in the last election. If some of you doubt that, we hope that you continue to go down that path and continue to pursue that illusion.
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