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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (23 November) . . Page.. 2376 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Mr Moore, Mr Osborne and the Greens, you have put this Government in and it is your budget as much as it is theirs. Those are the real issues, and it is wrong for you to pretend to the Education Union and others that you have some magic potion to sort out their problems with this conservative government that you have supported, when you do not.

Mrs Carnell: Again, something I have never been called.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell says it is something she has never been called. She has been doing a lot of pretending; that is why. You have put in place a government which takes all its directions on health from the AMA. If you want to know Mrs Carnell's position on health, ring the AMA. I will give you their number. They probably have a recorded message.

This motion is about re-establishing that principle firmly and forever. It will set a precedent in this place that will take a lot of breaking, and so it ought to. We should never have arrived at this position. If those who in the past might have criticised the Labor Government over education had any spine, they would have threatened the Government. That is what it is about. If you do not like what is delivered up in the budget, you take your chances at changing government.

Mrs Carnell: That is stupid.

MR BERRY: It is not stupid. That is what it is about. The Government may have made progressive promises to the world, indeed they did make progressive promises by the bucketful to the world, but they are not delivering on too many of them. Out in my electorate, ask the people of Charnwood, who had their house values reduced by this decision to strangle the funding for the school, so the school is closed. Ask those people in Dunlop who built new houses to raise their families in the expectation that they would have a high school. That has gone. Let us not forget that it was the Labor Government that assured supplementation for that school board, on the basis of the development in that area, to ensure its survival. You have got the government you wanted, Mr Moore, and the people you have been misleading in relation to the issue of extra funding for education ought now to be aware of what you have been up to. Let there be no mistake about it. The approach you have taken has been quite dishonest, in my view.

In relation to the amendment that has been put forward by Mr Osborne, the same thing applies. He has confined his attention to nurses. That is a laudable thing to do, there is no doubt; but you forgot about all the other people who work in the hospital system. Not just nurses work in the hospital system. Why did you not say to the nurses, "I am the one who voted for this Government, which is causing you all these problems. I am the one who did that, and I cannot change that unless I bring the Government down. It is a Liberal government and you get Liberal budgets, and that is what I voted for."? That is fair enough. I do not have any difficulty with that. If people want a conservative government, they have got one. There is no denying it. I think it is a bit short-sighted, with respect, Mr Osborne, to move an amendment that looks only at the issue of nursing and does not look at the carpenters, the fitters, the public servants and a whole range of other classifications who are getting the bullet from the hospital.

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