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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2256 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

introducing a holiday timetable, cutting back on evening services, cutting back on late night services, cutting back on weekend services, and hiking the fares by 50 per cent, they have been told they should now go the other way; they should increase the frequency of services; they should abandon the idea of holiday timetables; they should improve the late night services; they should improve the evening services; they should improve the weekend service so that it is a more attractive proposition for people to use the buses.

They were the two big items in Mrs Carnell's glorious alternative budget. She has never made the Health savings. I will not go into the VMO contracts which she rushed to sign in the first weeks of her Government and which the Auditor-General said saved nothing. Not only did she not make savings; she kept coming back to the Assembly asking for more money. Then you have the ACTION savings which they did make; but, in the process of making them, in the process of relentlessly and doggedly sticking to them, they damaged the public transport system in Canberra to the point where their own consultant tells them that they stuffed it up and they should come back and fix it.

Mrs Carnell might not know what to do next, Mr Speaker. When there is a Labor government she will see. She will see that her inaction over the last three years is not the way to run a government and that you can have a government which actually does things. This Government's actions over the last three years were all based on reports commissioned by the Labor Party. How often do you see it? Again and again they come in and say they have this wonderful idea for something to do, whether it is driver training or whatever. Where did they get the idea from? From a report commissioned by the Labor Party. They do not have any ideas of their own. The only ideas that they have had in three years have been ideas they got from reports commissioned by the Labor Party, except for a couple of classics like blowing out the health budget and destroying the public transport system in Canberra.

Mr Speaker, the Labor Party does not apologise for criticising this budget; and the Labor Party does not apologise for voting against it if we believe the priorities in it are wrong, and we do. It is not our job, it is not the job of the Opposition, to praise the Government, to give them a slap on the back and say they are doing a great job when they are not, and we will not.

There is one other thing I want to say, Mr Speaker, in conclusion. The Chief Minister, in her remarks, falsely claimed that the Labor Party has opposed every tax increase that the Government ever proposed. That simply is not the case. The Labor Party has always taken a responsible approach in relation to revenue proposals put forward by the Government. We considered them and we expressed concerns about them, as we did with the road rescue fee and as we did with the debits tax; but we supported those tax increases. Let us not let stay on the record the lie that Labor opposes sensible revenue measures proposed by the Government. That does not mean that we will not propose measures to ameliorate the adverse social impact of those tax increases when we are concerned, as we did with the road rescue fee and as we did with the debits tax.

Mr Speaker, our biggest criticism of the road rescue fee was not that they imposed it. Our biggest criticism of it was that they said they did it to provide a fifth ambulance and we did not get one, not for months and months. In fact, we did not get one until the Labor Party embarrassed them into providing it. Those are the facts, Mr Speaker.

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