Page 3615 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 19 October 1993
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We are achieving real reform at a rate which has never been seen in this Territory - a rate which you people when you were in government were completely unable to achieve. You were a joke when you were in government. You were strong on the rhetoric, but when it came down to the action you were just a joke. You achieved nothing.
Madam Speaker, the ideology, "Let us privatise, let us corporatise, let us deregulate", of the Industry Commission, which Mrs Carnell so happily apes tonight, took another point in relation to the ACT when it was suggested that we should deregulate the taxi industry, that we should do away with licence fees. We indicated that that was not Government policy. I was most intrigued to see on Saturday that Bruce Baird, the New South Wales Liberal Transport Minister, said exactly the same thing as I did. He said, in effect, that a market is a lot more complex than the view of the world you get from reading a Micro-economics I textbook. You cannot just deregulate the taxi industry without causing massive disruption to a whole lot of small business people. Bruce Baird rejected the Industry Commission's recommendations in relation to the taxi industry just as strongly as I did.
This blinkered ideological view of the world from the Liberal Party is really a testament to their failure when they were in government. They had the chance when they were in government to achieve some real reform in the government trading enterprise sector. They conspicuously failed in their efforts there. Costs went up. The situation was getting out of hand. This Labor Government has taken a firm hand on the tiller. We have got our trading enterprises moving in the right direction. Mr Berry in question time today, to great guffaws from you opposite, demonstrated how ACTTAB is booming along as a statutory authority. ACTEW is achieving remarkable efficiencies and is continuing to deliver to the ACT ratepayer cheap water, electricity and sewerage. It is continuing to provide a dividend to ACT Government and is leading the country in reduction of costs. You do not have to corporatise or dabble in this ideology to achieve savings. You do it by hard work in government - something you lot were incapable of.
MR HUMPHRIES (9.07): Madam Speaker, I seek leave to speak again on this matter. I have already spoken on it.
Mr Berry: No more. We have had enough.
MADAM SPEAKER: Leave is not granted. Mr Humphries, I am advised that you have not yet spoken on this.
Mr Humphries: I thought I had spoken on it. I have a note saying that I have spoken on it.
MADAM SPEAKER: Please proceed.
MR HUMPHRIES: The Chief Minister spoke at length, when this paper was presented in June, about the heads of government meeting earlier in June and in particular about the implications of the Mabo decision for the ACT. It is worth reflecting on what has happened to that issue since that meeting of the heads of government, and in particular on how the position of the Labor governments, both federally and in the ACT, has changed since that time.
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