Page 3209 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 September 1993
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Ian Davis weighed in again with his article headed "Failed! The acid test of self-rule". The critics of this budget are numerous and ferocious, and they have every right to be so.
Let us just have a look at youth. What has this Government produced? One hundred and thirty-one pages of waffle, and not even a real job a page - in fact, not even a real job at all. Youth unemployment in Canberra is running at 32.5 per cent, near the highest rate for youth unemployment in this country. Yet there is nothing in this budget to assist young people in this city to get jobs or homes. Yes, there is Commonwealth funding for labour market programs, but there is nothing from that bunch over there.
Ms Follett: One-and-a-half million; read the papers.
MRS CARNELL: Real jobs, jobs that actually continue. What have they provided for youth? A youth program at Calthorpes' House in Mugga Way to look at the lives of young people might be a really nice idea in good times, but it does very little to help young people who need jobs and homes. The youth budget statement contains quite a few kits, videos and the like to be produced for a variety of reasons, yet there is nothing in the way of concrete programs to create real employment or to address the long-term problems that our young people face. This Government has done nothing for youth. There is just rhetoric and empty promises.
The women's budget statement, like the youth statement, consists of 153 pages of bumf and waffle. There are no real initiatives and little that helps in the day-to-day problems experienced by many women and their families in this city. In fact, by making household budgets harder to balance, Ms Follett has made life significantly more difficult for many women in this town.
If we look at education, it has been hard hit by this budget. The loss of 90 staff positions, 80 of them at college level, means that the overall provision of services in government schools will be reduced. It is not possible to pull 80 people out of any one level of education without damaging the entire structure. Rather than sack teachers, the Government should address the cost of non-teaching staff and look at ways of fairly increasing the face to face teaching hours for our current staff. This might be achieved by reducing the non-teaching requirements placed upon our teachers or creating a more flexible working environment. No matter how it is dressed up, the Government's savage treatment of our public school system roughly translates into the loss of one position for each of Canberra's schools. Quite clearly, this Government places bricks and mortar above teachers and students. Is this social justice, Ms Follett?
This budget confirms that ideals and visions are no longer the credo of the Labor Party. They have retreated in the face of change. They have sat content with existing structures, tinkering at the edges and fiddling while the world goes by. The rest of the world is devolving, decentralising, commercialising, corporatising, privatising, and producing the results. Not so the ACT, which must be the last Stalinist outpost in the world, where we still centralise and decorporatise. We have seen ideology set in concrete, flying in the face of commonsense. Our public sector needs to become more vibrant and productive. Instead, old ways live on. It is no wonder that our public servants are restless. Nothing has changed, except that there will be fewer of them.
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