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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (26 September) . . Page.. 3488 ..

MR OSBORNE: Go for your life, pal. Go for your life, Harold. I have no problem when Mr Hird interjects, Mr Speaker. I like to know that he is awake. A couple of schools will have some extra classrooms, which I am very pleased about, and an ACTION administration building is being built at the town centre. There are also a number of minor capital works going ahead, including a toilet for the nudists at North Kambah Pool. They are all very commendable. There are no complaints from me.

Mr De Domenico: It is up behind your place, is it not?

MR OSBORNE: I think I will leave that one alone, Tony. It is good to see that the people of Tuggeranong are finally going to enjoy a level of facilities and services comparable with that in the more established areas of the city, although I still admit to a measure of anxiety about the level of bus services, especially school bus services, that Tuggeranong has.

In conclusion - I have tried to be very brief - in some ways I am disappointed that Mrs Carnell is still blaming her financial problems on the previous ACT Labor Government and the current Federal Government which she begged the people of Canberra to vote for. As I said yesterday, I do not really care what the Labor Party did in previous years. I think they suffered at the last election. What I am interested in and what the people of Canberra are interested in is what Mrs Carnell is going to do from now on to fix our economy.

I noticed that the business community has welcomed this budget with open arms. Two prominent business people said to me yesterday that they were very pleased with what is contained in this budget and that Mrs Carnell sold it very well at her breakfast yesterday. However, I also note that a local economist yesterday morning gave it the label of an "all or nothing budget". This budget has the potential to be good in the short term, but we will know only in a couple of years' time whether this plan is working for the Territory in the long term or whether all that we are doing is just creating an even bigger and bigger debt problem.

Mr Speaker, during the budget debates I will be looking to the Government to convince me that this plan will work and that my concerns about just how bad the problem is with the overall debt are worth worrying about. At the same time, I will also be looking to the Labor Party to convince me that they have a plan for our economy which will work better. I do not see the point in voting against any part of the budget if there is not a better alternative, something which I think was lacking last year and I hope will not be lacking again this year. I at least would like to have a choice.

I have yet to go through all the detail in the budget papers, but I will be judging this over the ensuing weeks and also during the estimates process. I have promised Ms Follett that I will turn up this year. I accept that at self-government, in accrual terms, we inherited a position of debt; but I, for one, am not prepared to see it get any worse. I am prepared to support realistic decisions, even tough, unpopular decisions, to prevent us from passing on to our children a legacy they can never recover from.

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