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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1950 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

That is a little at odds with those opposite. We were looking last night at the Labor Party's home page - I am very pleased that the Labor Party has finally gone onto the Net - where it was great to see this:

Welcome to the home page of the Australian Capital Territory branch of the Australian Labor Party.

From here you will find information about the Labor Party in the ACT, policies of the ACT Labor Party and ACT Labor MPs.

You can then access those particular areas to find out more about the ACT Labor Party. Because Mr Whitecross was so keen on making comments about how this Government had no plans, we immediately went to ACT ALP policies. Unfortunately, it is not a very long entry. Under ALP Policies, it says:

The ACT ALP is currently reviewing its policies. New policies will be released before the 1998 election.

If we are looking at no plans, do we have no plans from those opposite! At least it did not take us long to read it. Mr Whitecross also made some comments about ABS statistics. He suggested that you simply could not believe them. I think he should go and tell the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Mr Berry: He did not say that.

MRS CARNELL: He did, actually; he did suggest - - -

Ms McRae: Suggest - it is a bit different.

MRS CARNELL: No; you read what he said. He suggested that the unemployment figures - the ones that were produced by the ABS - were somehow unbelievable. If Mr Whitecross does not like those figures, he might like to look at the DSS figures. Those are the people who actually pick up benefits on a weekly or fortnightly basis. The ABS statistics show that there are 11,500 people unemployed in the ACT at this stage; the DSS figures show just over 9,000. Maybe he would like to use the DSS figures rather than the ABS figures, and on that basis I think we would have just over 5 per cent unemployed in the ACT. Those are the only two sets of figures that exist. One is the number of people who pick up benefits; the other is the Australian Bureau of Statistics figure. We do not mind which one they use, because both sets of statistics are tracking down.

The other thing that was raised in the debate was the ACTEW situation. It seems that those opposite and others in the Assembly believe that somehow ACTEW at this moment has an appropriate capital structure. That means that the way ACTEW was set up was right. No other government in this country that I know of would perceive that ACTEW's current capital structure was right. In fact, the New South Wales Government and other governments have either privatised, as the New South Wales Government is about to do, I understand, or, alternatively, changed the capital structure of their energy producers.

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