Page 3672 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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relations would put pressure on wages and, through that, higher inflation, which would lead to higher interest rates. It quotes a figure of some 316,000 people who could, over time, be made unemployed as a result of such changes. Econtech calculates that any reversal of industrial relations would lead to higher unemployment and higher interest rates. The figure for interest rates quoted by this respected economist is an increase of 1.4 per cent above what it would be if Work Choices was left in place.
Under the last Labor government we saw inflation sitting much higher than it does now, and wages did not keep up with it. However, under this government wages have grown by 20 per cent and remained well above inflation. We have all benefited from that in the ACT in terms of record growth and record levels of wages—some $200 a week higher than the national average.
Labor has neither the track record nor—the current lot—any expertise in running an economy. An opinion piece in the Canberra Times yesterday maintained laughably that the Rudd shadow ministry is bursting with economics degrees, which is somehow supposed to translate into automatic acumen in managing a trillion-dollar Australian economy. Well, I am sorry, but that is just la-la land stuff. Anyone can recognise that. Theoretical knowledge is not the same thing as real experience in dealing with volatile international economic conditions.
The IMF, in making an annual assessment of the Australian economy in September, commended Australia’s exemplary economic management and recognised Australia as being at the forefront of international best practice. It noted that we have improved our fiscal sustainability by accumulating surpluses, eliminating net debt and establishing the Future Fund to provide for future liabilities. This is the same Future Fund that shadow Treasurer Wayne Swan plans to raid to pay for some of Labor’s election promises.
Labor, far from having an economic plan of its own, is pretending to me-too it on the Howard-Costello economic blueprint, but with some small twists. Its lack of policy substance is betrayed by the enormous number of new bodies and inquiries they are planning to cloak their policy, in fact, to cloak their policy laziness if they get into office on Saturday. They are planning no fewer than 67 new bureaucracies and to establish 96 reviews if they are elected. What does all that extra red tape and bureaucracy remind you of? You do not have to look too far. The ACT government can certainly be accused of that. But now the ACT government is counterbalanced by the Howard-Costello government.
Mr Stanhope’s boast of 20,000-odd jobs being created since his government came to office, I am afraid, is really coincidental. It is only a matter of timing. It is because of the federal government’s investment in Canberra and in our commonwealth public service and also its promotion of business in the private sector. Most of those new jobs are, in fact, with expanded commonwealth government departments. They owe absolutely nothing to the Chief Minister and his government.
The federal government puts a lot of money into the ACT. In August it announced that the ACT will receive over $37 million this financial year for untied general
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