Page 1545 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 18 May 1993
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The solution seems to lie in:
. planning to leave open a wide range of options for transport systems.
. developing preferable futures rather than projecting from the status quo.
It does then refer you to another paper, but that does not say much more. What the hell does that mean? What is the future for transport technology in the ACT? Mr Deputy Speaker, I submit that we need a little more than that. I can only hope that the appointment of the 2020 committee, with Dr Peter Ellyard chairing it, will lead to the point where some forward thinking is injected into this study, at least during the remaining short time until August, when it is supposed to be finished.
I have only one other point, and it has to do with the financial aspects. Where on earth this came from or what it is based on I cannot imagine. In the paper entitled "Finance and the Economy", at page 7, under the heading Key Trends and Developments, there is a table which shows that from the year 1988-89 through to 1991-92 taxation receipts went up 11.7 per cent, 18.8 per cent, and 23.1 per cent respectively. In the projection from 1992-93 on, it shows only a 7.9 per cent increase in 1992-93, a 1.8 per cent increase in 1993-94, a 1.7 per cent increase in 1994-95, and a 0.4 per cent increase in 1995-96. Why a sudden break at the end of 1991-92? It is averaging around a 20 per cent increase in taxation receipts and suddenly it drops below 10 per cent and starts to go in the opposite direction. It starts to go down instead of up. It notes that the figures in italics are only estimates, but I think they must be pretty poor estimates. Maybe the Treasury should go back and have another look. Mr Deputy Speaker, I think I have made my point. There is a major fundamental deficiency in where this study is going, apart from the other relatively minor matters I have drawn attention to.
MR DE DOMENICO (8.55): Mr Deputy Speaker, I went through the papers, as Mr Kaine did, and I stopped at a paper entitled "Economic Development and Employment". At page 9 I found perhaps the most important and challenging comment I saw in all the papers, namely:
The Canberra economy will have to generate at least 4,800 additional jobs per year.
On my very quick calculations, that is 144,000 jobs by the year 2020. It made me think that we should not be believing what economists, regardless of their political persuasions, are saying about unemployment. Even if Australia's bust turns to boom, there will never again be enough jobs to go around. There is hope, but it involves taking a pragmatic look at what is generating unemployment and then making pragmatic changes to our social system. Forget economic theory and get out your pocket calculator to see the elegance of the solution for yourself. When the solution has been accepted and implemented, we will have a country that is internationally more competitive and a people who have a high quality of life. The work-share initiative increases social justice along the way, and it seems that everybody wins. With all these things, there is doom and gloom first, and sunrise later.
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