Page 1208 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 11 May 1993
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Mr De Domenico: Why not? It might be cheaper for us to do it. It might save a dollar or two, giving the same cover but saving millions for the ACT Government.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Westende): Order!
MR BERRY: We are not going to contract it out. We are going to provide for the ACT Government Service the level of cover which they had been provided with previously. Why would we do anything else? What would you want to do? Do you say that as a condition of joining the ACT Government Service you should have less? That is what Mr De Domenico is on about. This Government is not about that. We are about building a government service which is efficient, which is effective and which has high morale. That is the most important part. It should not be frightened of its future employer, as it would have been, as any worker would have been, had the Federal Liberals been elected.
I think the message is loud and clear. We have a progressive Federal government in place; we have a progressive ACT government in place. We will work together in the interests of the ACT; but, in particular, we will not isolate ourselves from the rest of Australia, as Mrs Carnell would seek to do, as she suggests in relation to businesses in the ACT. Mrs Carnell would have the boom gates put up again; she would stop them crossing the border - except, Mrs Carnell, if you want to go to the Eagle Hawk Motel for lunch. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, this again is a progressive involvement in a feature of Australian government that will take us into the next century, and Labor involvement in it will be one of the great successes.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
COMMONWEALTH FUNDING
Discussion of Matter of Public Importance
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Madam Speaker has received a letter from Mr Kaine proposing that a matter of public importance be submitted to the Assembly for discussion, namely:
The Government's responsibility to consult with the community on its proposals to deal with the recommended reduction in Commonwealth funding.
MR KAINE (3.54): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I did not bring this subject forward for debate today idly. The Grants Commission report on general revenue grants relativities for 1993 raises matters of great concern to the community and the Government; and I repeat - to the community and to the Government. There is one significant, salient fact which emerges from the report, and that is that the commission recommends that the ACT general revenue grant be reduced by $42.8m - that is the grant for allowances outside the relativities calculations - and a further $25.2m reduction in funds distributed from the pool of revenue funds. None of the sophisticated arguments advanced to explain the differences in the way the relativities were assessed can add any comfort to the fact that $68m less is recommended by the commission to be paid to the ACT in 1993-94 as compared to this current fiscal year.
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