Page 1692 - Week 08 - Thursday, 28 September 1989
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would implement that policy. Unfortunately, that is not possible.
Let us look at the particular areas that I have already mentioned - the preschool area, the greatest learning period, and the reading recovery program. I draw to the attention of the Government something I have already drawn attention to - the parish preschool experiment which indicated that money invested in those two areas of education would return fourfold. So what we have, of course, is a short-view budget that brings these sorts of cuts - small percentage cuts from a whole budget. It could have been the situation that the Government responded to the level of community pressure - nearly 5,000 signatures on a petition, outweighing any other by far; stopwork meetings; parental support; and a series of letters. Still the Government ignores, in its cavalier attitude, that sort of pressure.
Had Government members really been genuine and not cynical, as the P&C Council suggests, then they would have paid attention to that and they would have responded. I say to you, "Shame, for not responding to this. You could have found that money". The same applies to health. The Minister is not here, I note. You are going to have to deal with low morale, high resignation rates and those sorts of problems.
I say that the main problem we have with this budget is that the Government has failed to carry out a genuine consultation process. I genuinely had high hopes for that consultation process, and you will remember that I said publicly to a group of teachers who were demonstrating here that in fact the Government could well be having a genuine consultation process. I said that I believed it would be the case that they would make some reasonable adjustments to those particular areas, and I can say that I was profoundly disappointed and that the teachers and the nurses have also been profoundly disappointed.
If you look further at this same document Policies for a Fairer Canberra and you look into the health area, you will see a long discussion on a series of matters, but the one in particular I would like to draw attention to is this:
An ALP Labor Government will be well equipped to develop a modern industrial relations environment in the health system. The Labor Party has always had a close and fruitful relationship with the trade union movement.
I say to the Labor Party, "Thanks to this budget and to your attitude, you are starting to lose your grip on that relationship".
MS FOLLETT (Treasurer), in reply (5.54): Mr Speaker, I will just speak briefly to round up this debate. Could I first of all thank all the members who have contributed to
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