Page 2604 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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debt on the broader scale. But, more importantly, we need to raise incentives to work and invest, to reduce the burden of business regulation, to increase flexibility in the labour market and to lift the efficiency of our infrastructure. All of these points have specific and particular relevance to us in the Australian Capital Territory.
Mr Speaker, the Minister focused his statement on unseemly personality attacks on prominent members of the Liberal Party and the coalition front bench, rather than on the important issues. It is something which he is prone to do and which is symptomatic of Labor Ministers everywhere when they are struggling to justify an attack which is baseless. We have already witnessed this with Mr Keating. We do not want another Mr Keating in this parliament.
I point out in conclusion, Mr Speaker, that the coalition's economic and tax package will not cause high levels of unemployment, particularly in Canberra. It will not cause high levels of youth homelessness. It will not increase the incidence of children living in poverty. It will not add to the lack of adequate support for those in our community suffering from physical or intellectual disabilities and those suffering from the depredations of age.
After seven years of Labor government these massive inequities persist and grow. Knocking the alternatives put forward by the coalition, which will be the future government, will not help this Labor Government which has mismanaged the economy for so long. I would like to give Mr Berry a copy of the economic action plan so that he can actually read what it says.
MR HUMPHRIES (10.40): Mr Speaker, I seek leave of the Assembly to speak for 10 minutes on this subject.
MR SPEAKER: You do not have to seek leave. Please proceed.
MR HUMPHRIES: I do, Mr Speaker, because I have already spoken once on this.
Leave granted.
MR HUMPHRIES: We are debating, as Mr Kaine has indicated, a ministerial statement given in the Assembly a few weeks ago by the Minister for Community Services and Health, which amounted, as I said at the time, to nothing more than a lame, tedious and misleading attempt to belittle the economic action plan that was recently released by the Leader of the Opposition.
I can understand why that was the case. I can well understand, given the way that recent opinion polls have gone, that members of the Labor Party wished to come to the support of their colleagues at the Federal level. I said
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