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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 14 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 5023 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

Minister Quinlan should get out and talk to the community. Industrial manslaughter, the right of unions to enter premises, portability of long service leave, not raising the thresholds on payroll tax, the introduction of a levy on parking spaces, three failed attempts, thankfully, on extra revenue initiatives aimed at the business and the planning legislation, which will be discussed somewhat later-the litany goes on-have all put the mockers on business in this territory. How the government can say that it is unashamedly pro-business and think that it is convincing people is beyond me; it has an odd way of showing it.

Let us look at the government's commitment. The government is obviously committed to its white paper-or is it? At the briefing in the afternoon, after the launch of the white paper-I will get to the launch because it is an important part of the way in which this paper is viewed-officials were asked whether the government's commitments were firm commitments. There are 47 actions. They are not action plans or strategic plans, they are just actions. You can do actions at kids preschool as well. This white paper is as effective as a song at a kids preschool, except the kids preschool would be far more enjoyable and cost a whole lot less.

The answer was that they are not actions; they are maybes-maybe 47, maybe 46, maybe 45. There is no money to fulfil the strategic plan that the Treasurer is so proud of. Without the money or the commitment, and having to go back through the budget process which should have been done after 21/2 years, you begin to get the picture of this government's commitment to an economically sustainable future in the ACT, based on the diversification of our revenue base, so that we can put more nurses into hospitals, more teachers into schools and more police out on the beat.

The white paper is a fabulous document. There is the full-on version-the 97-page full document-or the 37-page synopsis document. Perhaps somebody should explain to the Treasurer what a synopsis is. You are gobsmacked when you see it. The government was so proud of its documents and its efforts that it could not wait to give them to people. It called in the business leaders of this community at 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday last week to give them a briefing. Business leaders turned up to get their documents, so that they could read them and be ready for the full-on briefing at 11.30. After an hour were they handed anything with great pride by the Treasurer and his officials? The answer is no; nobody got the documents.

We then went through almost an hour of the launch where all the minister did was read from a prepared speech that announced absolutely nothing. At the end officials had the gall to ask, "Any questions of the Treasurer?"What questions would you ask him when you did not know what was in the document? People who had spent two hours waiting in expectation of reading the documents and being able to have a reasonable conversation with the Treasurer were told that they could go outside, have a sandwich and read the white paper. Perhaps they should have had a Bex and a good lie down-it would have probably been more beneficial-but they were told they could have a sandwich, a glass of juice, and talk to the Treasurer about the documents that they weren't allowed to see. We were certainly proud of our little white paper, weren't we?

Let us get to the nub, to the guts of this. What is the government going to do for us? It was interesting that in question time the Treasurer said, "The plan itself is a commitment."A commitment without action, a commitment without money,

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