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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 4 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 1082 ..

MR BERRY: Mr Moore, if there was 100 per cent commitment to ensuring that the money was available to fulfil the requirements of the SACS award, I would believe you; but there is not. They deserve it more; and people do not hate these workers as they hate the Feel the Power of Canberra campaign. That is the lot you have thrown yourself in with. A million dollars will be spent on the useless Feel the Power of Canberra campaign. That is another way we could have helped to make this a more caring and sharing budget, Mr Moore: We could have used that money for appropriate caring purposes instead of for this useless slogan.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, this slogan and the way that it has been managed demonstrate the style of the Government opposite. It is a Government that does not care about people. It cares only about its own image. Let us not forget that the Government developed that slogan in the ACT, rather than developing it with the assistance of people outside of the ACT to ensure that we understood fully what people wanted to see in respect of their nation's capital. We got some second-hand slogan, which appears in hundreds of places and is attached to our numberplates, because of the incompetence of one of our Ministers, to the embarrassment of the lot of us. Eighty-seven per cent of us do not like this slogan; but Mr Moore does, and he likes spending the million dollars on it as well. He does not mind supporting the Government's approach on this.

Then there is the promise of no cuts to education and, of course, Mr Moore's long commitment to education. There was a commitment in the election campaign to provide additional IT for education; but now where will the money come from? Will it come from somewhere else out of the budget? Mr Moore has sculpted his position on this as well, saying that he has always stood up for education, but he will allow them to move the money around inside. If they are going to find the money for the IT in education, it is going to have to come out of jobs in the education system.

I must say that the budget's ideological hit on public servants in the central office troubles me considerably, because it does not seem to consider the impact on education or the management of education that this sort of ideological hit might have. There are 38 jobs cut in the sector and some secret plans to use long-term unemployed as cheap labour. Has Ms Hinton told you yet, Minister, what is actually going to happen in the department? I will be interested to hear.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, there can be no kidding about this budget. It is a budget that is not fair. It is a budget that does not live up to the promises that were made in the election campaign. For instance, there was $15m lost to the people of Belconnen with their Belconnen pool, a promise not lived up to; a promise for an athletics track; a promise for - - -

Mr Humphries: How would you have paid for it, Wayne?

MR BERRY: The first instalment would be paid by dropping off all the scatterbrained ideas that you people have involved yourselves in and that have cost the Territory millions upon millions of dollars. Let us not forget the implosion. We are still to pay for that. It was another scatterbrained idea. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, the fact of the matter is that this Government does not care about the community it is supposed to serve.

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