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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1266 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Mr Whitecross said that we should build stronger links with the region. Mr Kaine has already made the appropriate comments on that. Maybe Mr Whitecross had forgotten about the regional leaders forum that has been operating for the last two years, and about a number of joint approaches that this Government is taking with the shires in the region to get a regional approach to lots of things such as airports, fast trains and environmental planning.

He went on to say that we need to boost labour market programs. That is what the whole budget was about. Mr Whitecross seems to have suggested that the way he would do that is to go back to a failed policy of the 1970s, meaning community employment programs - in other words, make-work schemes - or alternatively training people when there are no jobs at the end of the training. I do not think that is a terribly appropriate approach. I did not hear at any time through Mr Whitecross's speech any mention of the 5,600 jobs that have been created since the budget that I brought down late last year. He spoke about unemployment being a very real problem. I agree. That is why we brought down a jobs budget last time. That is why we have managed to create 5,600 jobs and have 2,600 fewer people unemployed. You could add to that all of the other economic indications that are showing that the job market is starting to recover, and recover well.

The thing that I found most interesting about Mr Whitecross's speech was the number of times all the way through the speech - and I do not have time to go through them all now - when what he said was simply inconsistent with the previous paragraph. Mr Whitecross made a number of comments in his budget - - -

Mr Moore: Just give us an example.

MRS CARNELL: I will give you an example. He said that this budget was shock, horror, more of the same. He said that the 1996-97 budget saw no deviation from the plan. He went on to say that the budget this year is more of the same and that a three-year budget is a fallacy. You cannot say that the three years have been more of the same and then in the next paragraph say that a three-year budget is a fallacy.

Those opposite have said categorically that they do not like the lease-back approach that we took this year; that they do not like selling assets; that they do not like the ACTEW approach. They do not like any of that. That means that they like borrowing or they like cutting services and going down the path of redundancies.

Mr Moore: Or raising taxes.

MRS CARNELL: Or raising taxes. I accept that. There is raising taxes, there is reducing expenditure or there is borrowing. If you rule out those three, there is the approach that we have taken. Suppose we increase borrowings. Suppose we accept that borrowing is the way to go. Let us be fair. Mr Whitecross spoke about deficit budgeting. That is what he wants to do. He wants to go into significant borrowings. If we do that, our AAA credit rating will suffer.

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