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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (23 November) . . Page.. 2375 ..

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, I would like to deal, first of all, with Mr Moore's amendment. The Labor Opposition will not be supporting the amendment. It is obviously something that has been drafted at a time when it ought not to be. Mr Moore is very anxious about this issue and, quite obviously, this particular amendment has no place in this debate. This is a serious debate about principle which has been raised. It has been raised by the Government, notwithstanding the embarrassment it might suffer in relation to the matter. It nevertheless is a motion that ought to be supported in this place.

I should also talk about some of the reasons for this motion and a lot of the publicity that has led up to this point. Mr Moore and Mr Osborne have made a great deal out of their efforts to amend the budget. I think Mr Moore has always known that what he is about in relation to this is contrary to the self-government Act and, therefore, contrary to the standing orders. He has been able to use his privileged position as a member of this Assembly and a powerbroker in the past to subvert the standing orders and the self-government Act. This motion will restore sanity in the assessment of matters that come before this chamber.

The other issue that has to be addressed, and we should try to remove all doubt about what has been going on in relation to this matter, is that the Education Union, in my view, has been badly misled by Mr Moore's actions. I think they have fallen in behind this issue on the basis of what it might do for their members, but they have been seriously misled and have not been properly advised on how a better outcome could occur. Mr Moore would know that the Labor Party's position in relation to education was to maintain education funding in real terms. It was also about providing supplementation for wage increases in the normal way from the Treasurer's Advance. If there were a Labor government, you would not have this problem. Those are the facts of the matter in relation to this issue of supplementation for wages and for the maintenance of funding in real terms.

Mr Moore had the opportunity to put into this place a government that would deliver those outcomes. He took the option of supporting a Liberal government, as did Mr Osborne and the ACT Greens. They took the option of putting in a Liberal government, which they are entitled to do, and they took it for their own reasons. They have got a Liberal government. You get Liberal budgets from Liberal governments.

If you want to talk about the Government's consultation with members of this Assembly, a sensible government takes into account the views of members in this Assembly when they are putting together their budget. That is how they survive. You do not put yourself in a position, in my view, where you put a right-wing conservative government in power and then moan about the budget they deliver. The fact of the matter is, Mr Moore, Mr Osborne and the Greens, that you have put in place a government which winds back community health services; you have put in place a government which has right-wing views in relation to industrial relations; you have put in place a government which is not prepared to support education in the way we have become used to in the ACT; you have put in place a government which refuses to come out in the open in relation to all of its policies; you have put in place a government which will strangle funding for high schools and close them by default.

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