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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (22 February) . . Page.. 187 ..

Ms Follett: That is not true.

MRS CARNELL: That is true. The Australian Bureau of Statistics will show you that there are 5,300 more jobs since we came to office. I am very happy to show you the basis upon which we use business incentive schemes. I am very happy to show you the sorts of proposals that are going to CanTrade at this stage. In the very near future we will have a strategy for the year 2000 Olympics. All of those things are part of the money that you have spoken about here. It is not handouts to business. In fact, a very small amount of it - $800,000 - is the amount in the business incentive package. The greatest percentage of the rest of it goes into things like promoting Canberra, tourism - all of those sorts of areas, which of course have a very specific strategic plan approach to how we are actually going to achieve outcomes. In fact, Mr Moore and the rest of the Assembly will be very pleased to see in the next budget approach some very specific performance indicators for all of these areas of government.

MR BERRY: My question is directed to Mrs Carnell in her capacity as Chief Minister. I refer to this morning's editorial in the Canberra Times. Probably more Canberrans noticed the Pryor cartoon next to it and had a bit of a chuckle. The editorial said:

The various trips to the Industrial Relations Commission have not made this end-stage any closer, perhaps particularly because the Government has seemed not to understand the way that industrial-relations dispute-resolution processes work. The Government is either not getting good specialist industrial-relations advice, or it is ignoring it.

Mr Speaker, given this, will the Government refrain from seeking advice from people like Mr Houlihan, Mr Kaufman - Kennett advisers both - and take some advice from competent industrial relations practitioners, to ensure that this sort of chaotic industrial relations environment that you have created here does not persist?

MRS CARNELL: Thank you very much, Mr Berry, for that question. It is interesting to note that the people we take advice from and the people who have represented us in the commission on almost every occasion are the same ones who represented you. They are identical people. The industrial relations advice that comes to me at the meetings we have every night comes from the same people who would have sat down and given you advice too. When I actually had a look at some of the background of the previous Government and Mr Berry in this area, it was really interesting to see the huge change-around, Mr Speaker. The other day when I was having a flip through Hansard, as I am sure we all do at times when we have nothing else to do, I noticed that on 8 December 1992 Mr Berry told this Assembly that the Chief Minister - that was Ms Follett at the time, obviously - made it clear that it would be inappropriate for ACT Government vehicles to be used for the purpose of making a point in a protest. What has happened now? He has turned around. Now it is quite okay for that to happen. It was hopeless then. It was simply not going to happen.

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