Page 2101 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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Madam Speaker, I have 15 more pages of initiatives in the Housing and Community Services area. In relation to industrial reform, I have 12 pages of initiatives that this Government is undertaking. In relation to sport and recreation I say, with some modesty, that I have been able to build upon the excellent work done by the previous Minister for Sport, Wayne Berry. Having had previous sports budgets put in place, this year's sports budget is regarded as the best since self-government. I am able to take some of the credit for the work undertaken by the previous Minister, but I hope that people recognise the great contribution that Mr Berry made in relation to sport in the ACT. All these initiatives are substantial; they are well defined; they are costed; and they are quantifiable. What do we have in response? We have a one-page budget strategy. Madam Speaker, I think that on this occasion Mrs Carnell should hide in her office until this debate has been concluded.
MR HUMPHRIES (5.07): Madam Speaker, I was really quite thrilled to hear Mr Lamont's comments. It was a return of the old trade unionist, banging the table and saying, "I am the man who is going to get things done". It proves to me what a tremendous impact Mrs Carnell's comments have made. Clearly, this Labor Government is worried. They are very worried about what Mrs Carnell has done. She put on the table the parameters of how she will operate next year, having won government at the 1995 election.
I would like to contrast the approach Mrs Carnell has taken with the approach taken by Ms Follett when she was in opposition. Ms Follett used the same opportunity in the response to the Appropriation Bill 1990-91 basically to attack the Government at every opportunity without putting any positive alternatives on the table. Mrs Carnell today has explained not just where the Government has fallen short but where her alternative Government, her Government in waiting, as it were, will provide solutions to Canberra's problems. She deserves great credit for having done that. Mr Moore had some criticisms of that approach. That is fair enough, I suppose. He can make judgments about this if he wants to. But I think that he and everyone else in this chamber should appreciate the fact that we have in this alternative budget at least an indication to the people of Canberra well before the 1995 election of the sorts of alternatives that will be pursued by a Liberal government. That is, I think, a considerably fairer and more open approach than that pursued by the Labor Party in opposition and those pursued by oppositions generally in the past in this place. That might upset people like Mr Lamont; but, of course, it takes great courage to do that, and Mrs Carnell has shown that courage.
Madam Speaker, what Mrs Carnell has done prevents the kinds of cheap shots that were taken by Ms Follett in response to the 1990-91 budget. For example, members will recall very well that at that time she got stuck into the Alliance Government because it dared to allocate $6m for redundancies. The record shows that the two most recent budgets in this place added something like $30m in redundancies at a time when the unemployment rate was considerably higher than it was back in 1990. That is the kind of dishonesty that you get when you do not produce your alternative figures. Mrs Carnell has produced her alternative figures, and that is, I think, to her great credit.
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