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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1825 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

hours compressed, teachers have not been available for certain courses, and so on. These cuts are impacting on students within the CIT system. The result, of course, is that students are not getting the benefit of the so-called social capital that this government trumpets. Social capital will be a clear lacquer that this government tries to place over everything cuddly that it does but it will not take you long to break through this thin veneer and discover what is lurking underneath.

Mr Humphries took to task one of my colleagues for not mentioning the feel the power campaign. I will just mention that briefly. We thought there would be bound to be a dollar or two in the budget for the feel the power campaign because this government were so wedded to it. At one time they were rusted onto it. I recall the debate when everybody thought number plates displaying the words "Feel the power" were such a good idea. I thought to myself, "I will duck around the car yard to see how many of them are still committed to feel the power." I searched and I searched and I could not find one feel the power number plate.

Mr Humphries: They are very valuable in that case.

MR BERRY: No, they are all gone. Not even the government want them now. I have not been able to find any mention of the feel the power campaign in the budget so I have to assess, on the face of it at least, that it is dead, and not before time. So there is one plus from the budget. That is all the time I will devote to the feel the power campaign for the moment.

Let me now deal with the Floriade fee. Floriade has been dragged down year after year by this government to the point where it is almost beyond redemption. Although we are to have a low fee and we are now back to somewhere near where we ought to have been, what is missing is a recognition that it is the Canberra community which heavily subsidises this major festival. It is subsidised by the Canberra community and now there has been a new fee structure adopted which does not recognise that subsidy. When people from nearby New South Wales or other states of our great Commonwealth come to the ACT to visit Floriade, they get in for five bucks. That is not a bad thing; I am sure that a lot of people will be attracted as a result.

People from the ACT get in for five bucks too, but they pay out of their taxes a subsidy for the Floriade. So they pay twice. It is not hard to make out an argument that there is something unfair about the new Floriade fee structure where people have to pay twice-that is, residents in the ACT pay twice and people from outside the territory pay once. We are being very generous to our interstate friends and they should feel generous towards the ACT government and the ACT community for the subsidy that we pay.

It has been an appalling few years for the Floriade. Floriade has withstood the onslaught of the government's approach even though the ad hoc decisions that we have seen would have brought any other festival to its knees. This great flower show continues to survive more or less as a result of the commitment of the people who built, put together and have attempted to manage it in these circumstances.

I want to go to the wages issue. Throughout the term of this government we have seen various struggles involving sectors of the trade union movement which are concerned about pay rises for their members. We saw the Chief Minister's Department pay rises.

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