Page 3024 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 September 1994
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Kaine Government which borrowed most. The strategy outlined by the Liberals has only one element: Promise anything. They are using promises in an attempt to buy votes. What they are not doing is counting the costs of their strategy. To fund this barrage of promises, even the Liberals' money tree would be stripped bare. The little fairies would not have a tree to dance under, Mrs Carnell, because all the money would be gone.
These Liberals opposite are trying to present themselves as an alternative government; but there are few out there in the community that will be sucked in by the strategies that they have adopted. At the same time, they offer the people of Canberra a dose of their draconian policies on industrial relations. Little Mr De Domenico and Mrs Carnell, hand in hand, dance down the street, singing, "We will do them over". They want to contract it all out, sometimes to the private sector and sometimes to New South Wales. What you can be sure of is that, no matter where the services go, it will be ACT jobs that will go with them. As the statistics show, the ACT has weathered the recession better than the other States and Territories. We are doing well - and that is the frustration for the Liberal Party. They cannot then make sensible promises. They have to make rash, unrealisable promises, sprinkled with fairy floss and hundreds and thousands.
Our unemployment figures demonstrate that we are doing well. But, under the policies of those opposite, you would see all the good work lost. Despite all of their rhetoric, the unemployment queues would grow. No doubt, right across this country, we have a job in front of us to deal with the issue of unemployment. Much work is being done by Labor at the Federal level to deal with this, and more will be done by this Follett-led Labor Government. You have to contrast the promises of the Liberal leader, Mrs Carnell, with the achievements in reform in the public sector which we have gained by working with our employees, not working against them. We have done better than the Liberals could ever have hoped to do, because it has been in a consultative environment. I think that there is more to be gained in the future; but it will not happen under the Liberals, where there would surely be a background of a shower of promises, with no substance. But that is Mrs Carnell all the way through. What we have done is to produce some productivity gains and reduce the costs of our services.
Every day, as I hear new statements from Mrs Carnell, I am reminded of the importance of the need for the Government to guard against savage cuts to essential services and to protect the public sector. All that is promised by the Liberals opposite is savage cuts. They want to take $30m out of the health budget, attack our public transport system, and attack the basis of our social justice budget, which provides so much for Territorians. People out there in Canberra understand that this is a government which is committed to social justice. It is not distracted from the main game by silly commitments to the individual. We are worried about the entire city. Individualism gets us nowhere. It leads us down the path of greed. What we have to do is make sure that we keep our eye on the social justice ball. Labor has done that, and we will continue to do it. We will not be distracted by silly ideology and economic rationalism, such as has been espoused by the Liberals opposite. We certainly will not be attracted to attacks on the trade union movement, which are quite common in the outbursts from the Liberals opposite.
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