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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2377 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

But he refuses to acknowledge that, in the lead-up to their demise in 1995, Labor squandered the land asset in desperate attempts to balance their budgets. And in doing so they killed the home price. They killed the land price in the ACT for four or five years. I think this morning's Canberra Times-on the lower left-hand corner-contains a little article about the strength of and the rise in home prices in the ACT. That has come about because of what this government has done. It has come about as a result of the policies that we have put in place, and it has come about because we have worked very hard to manage financially and environmentally, but also socially.

That is why, across this budget, we have three themes. We have actually taken a step back and taken the long view. They say it is squandered, it is wasted, it is piecemeal, it is political, and it is aimed at the election. We actually took a step back and said, "Now that we are in a position to really care for the people of the ACT because we have done a good job over the last couple of years, what is it that we should do?"

We are the government that put the poverty taskforce into place. We said, "They have raised some issues and we need to address them." We know that poverty is not something that will be addressed between now and the election, but we have put programs and moneys into addressing the issues raised by the poverty taskforce, and we will continue to do so if we are re-elected in October.

We also saw that now the opportunity existed to break some cycles, to break the cycle that might lead people into poverty, illiteracy or innumeracy, or any of those other situations that may lead to crime, to mental illness, to ill health, or to other issues. Our early intervention programs across all the departments will start to break those cycles.

At the same time we wanted to make sure that we created opportunity, that we continued to make up for Labor's record high unemployment figures that we inherited in 1995, so that the ACT would remain the jurisdiction with the lowest unemployment in the country. So we looked at innovation. What are the things that, in the future, will give us an edge over other people? What are the things that, in the future, will allow firms to succeed as has Tower Software, which today announced the largest roll-out of document management software in the world with a contract that it has won with the US Navy. That is why we put money into innovation.

It is why, with a surplus budget, we have been able to put money into the capital works program, a large amount of which my department will administer. Despite Mr Hargreaves' claim that we had been ignoring the asset base, we have not been ignoring the asset base. We have been putting money into it and building it up, and as more money has become available, we have put more money where we know it belongs, where it should go. We have a long-term vision, a long-term plan, and we actually now have the wherewithal, through good financial management, to make it happen.

That is something that Labor never had. They never had a vision, never had a plan, and never had the ability to manage the finances properly to make it happen. This government has.

Mr Speaker, this is an excellent budget. We are now about to talk about some of Mr Berry's amendments. Labor justifies these by saying, "We are not adding to spending. We are stopping spending." Governments have a right to their budgets. It is

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