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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1946 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

into what the budget will look like. Despite being in a minority situation, this budget has been developed by an Executive. Labor and Liberal have also ensured that it is impossible for any amendments to be made to the budget. Despite all the fanfare about increased transparency in the budget papers, it is still extremely difficult to determine what money is really going where. Once again, we hear nothing about the losers.

I believe also that this Government has failed to come up with a suitable long-term vision for the ACT. The Government is driven by a bottom-line economic approach. There is no far-reaching economic or industry strategy for the ACT in the budget. There is no real attempt to make our economic institutions more responsive to the pressures and challenges of the twenty-first century. Focusing some attention on the need to create jobs and strengthen the local economy is welcome; but, again, this is really much more of a window-dressing exercise. An industry plan is about more than gloss and rhetoric, events and airports.

As I said in the in-principle debate, this Government cut labour market assistance by nearly $3m in 1995. The Estimates Committee asked for a commitment from the Government to develop a strategy for addressing unemployment in the ACT, particularly long-term unemployment and youth unemployment. The Government's response to this was disappointing. In fact, they were saying that this is the Commonwealth's responsibility. Now, two years later, we see them boasting about the biggest single injection of funds into unemployment. It is also telling that the single biggest funding initiative is the graffiti reduction program.

This Government has also given low prioritisation to the environment, and we will speak again about that later. Two years ago, ACTION was cut by $12m over two years, and we warned then this would translate into cuts in services. The bus services in this town have become appalling, and at least now we have had some sense from the Government in this area in employing someone to do a thorough examination of ACTION services. I hope very soon this will translate into improved services. We will certainly welcome that report. We see no financial commitment to implementing greenhouse gas reduction targets, and some serious issues about Landcare funding also came to light during the estimates process. The ACT is at a crossroads and, despite a few good initiatives, on the whole the Government has not demonstrated the vision to take us down a path that will benefit the people and the environment of our region.

I note that Mr Whitecross referred to the strategic plan. While I am also concerned that we have not got further with it, I am not so sure that I agree with Mr Whitecross that it needs to be hurried at this point. There is a process being set in place by this Government now, addressing the concerns that were expressed in the Assembly, to look at the issues in a much broader way. I commend that, and I think it would be difficult to put a date on when that would be able to be reported on. If this is done properly, it may take that much time and we might actually get it right. I also support the concerns Mr Whitecross raised about the number of redundancies in a time of high unemployment. (Extension of time granted)

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