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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4081 ..

MS TUCKER: How is it that the Estimates Committee managed to pretty thoroughly discredit Jobs for Canberra? Yes, there is some extra funding in a couple of areas, but this has to be balanced against the massive cuts to employment programs by both the local and Federal governments in the past 12 months and the reduction in ACT Public Service employment levels. I heard Mrs Carnell interject that Jobline has been replaced by another program, but I cannot see that that program that is being funded instead of Jobline is dealing with the same group in our society. This is another concern I have generally about this Government. The programs that deal with the most disadvantaged, down-and-out people are the ones that seem to get moved off. Most of the programs highlighted in Jobs for Canberra are not new initiatives. Many of them are also funded from Commonwealth money.

Mr Speaker, there is no far-reaching economic strategy for the ACT in this budget. There is also no real attempt to make our economic and political institutions more responsive to the pressures and challenges of the twenty-first century. The rhetoric about a holistic approach to government is good, but not if the holistic approach to government means that it is all driven by the Office of Financial Management. The budget talks about the trialling of simple coordinated arrangements for the management of community grants. That sounds fine. Yesterday we had the example of the Arts Minister not knowing about a meeting that was organised by Chief Minister's and where public servants addressed the arts community about grant procedures.

Mr Humphries: It was not organised by Chief Minister's; it was organised by the Community Information and Referral Service.

MS TUCKER: Mr Humphries says that it was organised by the Community Information and Referral Service. I did not know that community groups could actually ask three highly paid bureaucrats to come and talk to their meetings every night without it going through any Minister or any person in control in the Government. The concern is that apparently this Arts Minister was not even aware of this meeting. It was a great pity for him, because the arts community were extremely angry. It was not very pleasant for the bureaucrats either. The Kick Start proposal was developed by the Office of Financial Management, with the Housing Department having three days to work on it. Is that a holistic approach to government?

Mr Speaker, at this time when our public institutions are being dismantled before our eyes, when the gaps between the rich and the poor are growing, when the pressures on the environment are getting worse, we need to be rethinking our priorities. That is why we think the budget strategy of this Government is based on the out-of-date belief that we can separate the operations of the economy from the real world; that if we get the fundamentals right the jobs will suddenly appear; that market forces will protect the environment. It is frightening when you realise that the most important decisions by our leaders are straight out of economic textbooks. We never stop to question whether maybe the economic models are wrong, not the people and the environment that will not fit these models.

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