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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (22 February) . . Page.. 215 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

for heaven's sake? There is nothing there. This Government is simply taking us backwards. We are not getting anywhere. I want to repeat my concern about the dual impact if we get a Federal Liberal government. That is when the alarm signals would have to ring very loudly in the ACT. With the incompetence and the mismanagement of this Government and the Federal Liberals, the ACT would be in great trouble.

MR DE DOMENICO (Minister for Urban Services) (4.21): Mr Speaker, I am delighted to stand and to speak on this matter of public importance. It is interesting to note what happens when politicians become members of the Opposition. There is a book around called "What you should do when you are in opposition", especially a Labor opposition, and what you should do is misquote, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock all the time, and say nothing positive. I must say, though, that Mr Wood went close to being a bit positive; but, then again, he is different from most of his colleagues on the other side of the house.

Mr Speaker, I think some of the figures that Mrs Carnell referred to need to be repeated. The most classic figure, the one that really hangs in the craw of anybody on the other side of the house, is this one: Whether people like it or not, in one year under the Carnell Government 5,300 new jobs have been created, mostly in the private sector, here in the ACT. When we couple that with the highest participation rate in the country - not the highest by just a little margin, but 10 percentage points higher than the national average - it tells me that people have confidence in wanting to get jobs here in the ACT. Whether people like that or not, they are what the ABS figures show. Compare that with the number of jobs created in the previous 12 months under the Follett Labor Government. I think it was 700. We got 700 under Follett and 5,300 under Carnell. I rest my case on that point. So much for statistics.

Let us have a look at the reality, because the other parts of Ms Follett's and Mr Wood's speeches consisted of a so-called litany of broken Liberal promises. Let us have a look at some of the ones that have been delivered, though, because we did not hear any positive stuff. We heard negative stuff all the way through. Let us have a look at some of the ones that were delivered - and after only 12 months, by the way. Workers compensation costs for the public sector in this town grew from $20m when I first asked a question in the Estimates Committee three years ago, I think, to about $43m two years after. They grew from $20m to $43m. What was the reaction to that by the previous Labor Government? It is an easy answer. It is the same answer as the amount of money we found in the coffers - zilch, nothing, a big fat zero. What have we done? We have had two inquiries - one by Tillinghast and one by Marsh and McLennan - conversations with Comcare, and Comcare agreeing to put somebody into our Public Service to try to get rid of some of those 400 people in the Public Service permanently on Comcare and not rehabilitated. That was under a government that supposedly was the worker's friend. They had complete control and dominance over things like workers compensation, occupational health and safety, social justice and compassion. Nothing was done. That is one promise that we have delivered.

We also went to the community saying that there is too much red tape in the way business is done here in the ACT. That was not something that we brought out of left field or right field. It was just commonsense. We listened to the community and listened to business, and that is what they told us. What did we do? We promised a red tape task force.

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