Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1161 ..

Mr Osborne: On a point of order, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker: I would have thought that at least one Minister would be here to listen to a budget reply. I draw your attention to the state of the house.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Wood): A quorum is present, Mr Osborne.

MR MOORE: The Liberals' device with ACTEW looks like a great deal - money coming in from an outside entity. It is interesting, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, that when the Chief Minister is being exposed for her distortions and when her Ministers are being disposed about these distortions - - -

Mr Humphries: Disposed?

MR MOORE: We would like to dispose of them, indeed. When they are being exposed for their distortions, where is the Chief Minister? She has gone off to hide somewhere, no doubt.

Overall, what has happened is that an organ of government has been transformed into an appendix, and that is now being slowly sold off, at first through borrowings, to private interests. This year's, like last year's, asset sales are effectively a trade in body parts, when you consider the Government to be a body and ACTEW to be one of its organs. It is a trade in body parts, and it must cease. Will it be the public or the private interests who end up owning this economic success of ACTEW? That will be one of the questions. If it is the private interests, will not the cost to the public inevitably rise as the profit motive becomes more and more powerful? We need answers to those issues, now, not in 10 years' time.

Let us look at the New South Wales budget. The New South Wales media have feted the Labor Premier, Mr Carr, as Robin Hood. Mrs Carnell has shown herself to be the opposite.

Mr Humphries: Maid Marian?

MR MOORE: Inasmuch as Bob Carr is Robin Hood, Mrs Carnell is not Maid Marian, but rather the Sheriff of Nottingham - or, more accurately, the Sheriff of Narrabundah. In Mrs Carnell's time in office, she has reduced community health services, and the public education system has lost ground to the private system.

Employment programs have been transformed into financial grants to private interests, in the hope - dare I say, the vain hope - that some of this public money will go to good public ends, in the hope that some of this money will go to jobs. That is part of this distortion. She says, "We give this money to business, we give this money to private enterprise, and that is how we get jobs, jobs, jobs". The polling tells her that, whatever she does, she has to use the words "jobs, jobs, jobs". But, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, it is a distortion. This whole budget is about distorting. This Government is about distorting. We see public wealth inexorably moving to private interests. The losers are the socially needy, the public education system and other public interests - health, housing and so forth - for which the Liberals have no love.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .