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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1235 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

delivery of this promise. Promises in respect of her cardio-thoracic unit have been broken time and time again, and we wait eagerly to see what happens with this one. This unit has yet to save one patient a trip to Sydney. Under the original plan, it was going to cost $1m per year; $500,000 was set aside for the initial set-up in the first year, with the claim that the unit would open in late 1996. Then in the second year $2.7m was allocated, with the promise that it would be up and running by June this year. In this year's budget, there is $3.5m and the start date has been put back again until July. This is a budget that merely points to the broken promises made by the Chief Minister and Health Minister, Kate Carnell.

On the matter of employment, the ACT went into shock as a result of Mrs Carnell's activities in the economy very early in the piece. I must say that recent figures are showing some signs of recovery, but only time will tell. That recovery, though, should not blind the community to the tragic circumstances of job losses in the Territory in the first two years of the Carnell Government. It was a government that showed that it did not care for the community, did not care for the unemployed. All it cared about was its public relations image, and that was something Mrs Carnell worked feverishly at, and still works feverishly at, as we grind our way through the Carnell term of office.

Let us look at this year's budget. Some $4.5m worth of redundancy money is being directed to job creation, but there is still $5m in the redundancy pool. The Creating Jobs for Canberra budget will still spend more on redundancies than it will direct to so-called job creation. There is a strong element of hypocrisy in the Government's jobs budget, especially when you see the circumstances that exist at the Acton Peninsula, where the contract arrangements have encouraged the recruitment of interstate companies, recruit interstate labour and use interstate machinery, when all of those products are available in plentiful supply here in the ACT. In other words, truck drivers in the ACT are missing out on jobs and trucks and heavy equipment are lying idle because of Mrs Carnell's failure to address the issue of jobs and to deal with the issue compassionately in the Territory.

MR HIRD (10.47): I wish to commend the Chief Minister and Treasurer, Mrs Carnell, on the budget she has produced for the ACT for 1997-98. Those members who spend time out in their electorates, as I do, will be well aware that the major concerns of the community are - - -

Mr Berry: You should have been spending a bit of time up at Melba, watching out for the Melba Health Centre.

MR HIRD: Mr Berry, I heard you in silence. You hear me in silence, sir, or I might bring up a few little reminders.

Mr Berry: I cannot wait.

MR HIRD: Good. The major concerns of the community are jobs and business growth, and the two are inextricably linked. At a time when the policies of the Commonwealth Government have caused a major downturn in the ACT economy, with higher unemployment the obvious result, the people of Canberra look to their Government to provide some of the answers to the Territory's employment and economic woes.

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