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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Wednesday, 30 June 2004) . . Page.. 3028 ..

I do not think you can take the rest of the issues that this government and governments before it have done in isolation. Also, I do not think that this amendment should be supported because, whilst our position is that you have an employment strategy covering all spectrums of the community that are looking for work for a variety of reasons, we are not seeing anybody putting up anything in its place. The opposition and the government fight a bit about philosophy, but not all that much. Generally speaking, we fight about the detail, about whether a particular initiative is a good one or a bad one, whether their initiative is better than ours.

We argue the toss about these things because at this point in time we are in government and can do something about that and members of the opposition were in government and at some time in the future probably will be in government and will then have an opportunity to put their specific strategies in place. The crossbench, on the other hand, will never be in that position, but one of its members wishes to express concern at the lack of a comprehensive and targeted employment strategy. In response to that, I say, “Put yours on the table, then, and match them up against each other. If you can’t, then it is a case of all care and no responsibility, and I do not accept that.”

What we are trying to do by this motion is to say that there is something that Canberra can be proud of. Government, business and the community are pulling together and we have had the best results. In fact, we have the best trend unemployment rate on record at 3.6 per cent. We have the lowest level of unemployment since November 1986. Mr Speaker, you will notice that the wording in the motion does not give congratulations to this government. It does not say that this government can take the credit for that. That is not said in the motion. The motion is about the fact that this is a good bit of news for the people of the ACT, that we have an optimistic outlook and ought to be celebrating it. That is the object of the motion.

I urge members not to support the amendment. Ms Tucker’s concerns are such that she wants to water down a piece of good news and say that there is a part of the community that is not being looked after but if she looks through a whole stack of issues, such as the budget papers, the economic white paper and the contracts that the government has with employment groups, Koomarri and some of the other community groups she will not find that there is a lack of action in this area. She will not find that at all. Ms Tucker might like to table her comprehensive and targeted employment strategy for disadvantaged groups and give both the opposition and the government a chance to do an audit on that strategy.

MR SMYTH (Leader of the Opposition) (11.55): Mr Speaker, there are important issues in what the Treasurer has said the government is doing for business. That is fine, but the whole point of the amendment is about what the government is doing to address unemployment. That is where the Treasurer’s argument falls down.

Members of the northern electorate may have received a letter from Maribyrnong Primary Parents and Citizens Association about the 2004-05 ACT budget and the government’s failure to follow up on the education equity component of the ACT social plan. I want to read small portions of it to the Assembly, if I may. It says:

It is a major concern that the major priorities to improve education equity identified in the Government’s Social Plan have been ignored in the Budget. The Social Plan

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