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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (22 February) . . Page.. 204 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

According to one participant, Denis Page, chairman of the Canberra Business Council, business confidence in the ACT was at its worst, with falling residential property values a big worry.

That was what Mr Page said on 19 February - Monday of this week.

In the past year, unemployment has risen from 7.1 per cent to 7.4 per cent. In fact, figures published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday show that over the past 12 months unemployment in the ACT has actually increased by 7.6 per cent, while nationally unemployment has fallen by 3.1 per cent.

Mr De Domenico: What has happened to the participation rate and the number of jobs?

MS FOLLETT: Mr Speaker, you may well have to invoke standing order 207 any minute now.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MS FOLLETT: Over the same period, the number of unemployed has risen by 5,400 - that is, 5,400 more real people are unemployed under your Government - and teenage unemployment has risen from 32.4 per cent to 43 per cent, the highest in Australia. For the past three months the number of people employed has actually fallen. In fact, we have lost 600 jobs since last October.

Mrs Carnell: What happened in the months before that?

MS FOLLETT: You will get your chance. Award wages have been static for six months - there has been no movement there - and, not surprisingly, retail trade growth in the ACT is the lowest in Australia, at less than half the national average and only one-third that of New South Wales. I think that is a disgraceful record for any government to have to look back on after only one year in office.

The Government has downgraded many of the services to the Canberra community, to the detriment of Canberra citizens. Bulk-billing local doctors have been sacked. The mammography unit at Woden Valley Hospital is to be closed. The nurses themselves are in uproar over the lack of consultation. The Government has forced the Canberra community to bear the cost of Liberal Party ideology. There is plenty of money for consultants, plenty of money for business tax breaks and plenty of money for overseas trips for the Chief Minister and for consorts. But health centres are closed; bulk-billing doctors are sacked; labour market programs and community group funding are slashed; workers have been threatened with lockouts and with the removal of their payroll deduction facilities; and, in the case of Charnwood High School, schoolchildren have had their school closed.

I would now like to detail some of the promises that this Liberal Government has broken, under the Liberals' own policy headings. I am quoting from the Liberals' own documentation. At election time Liberal policy on the ageing promised 50 new hospital beds. In fact, we have not seen a single one of those hospital beds; nor are there any private bulk-billing doctors in health centres. In fact, the bulk-billing doctors have all

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