Madam Chair, Minister, hon members, if we all accept that human life has equal worth, as the Minister quoted Will Hutton in his Budget Speech this year, and that we need to deepen the debate that will result in the improved implementation of government programmes - programmes that will ultimately deliver sustainable democracy and development - then the sum total of the Budget and its component parts would need to be interrogated so that we can establish whether the expectations of those of us who want to see a South Africa that we can all be proud of are being met.
The President's state of the nation address and the Minister of Finance's Budget Speech set government's agenda, an agenda for debate and delivery. How the rest of us in Parliament therefore participate in this broader debate within each portfolio committee will determine the depth of the debate and whether we can in fact influence government's agenda for the next financial year.
How we achieve national consensus, as the President recently encouraged us, will be determined by mostly the attitude and tone of the words not lightly spoken in this Chamber and in the portfolio committees. If we do not use these opportunities and approach them by making progressive proposals, but simply use them in an attempt to embarrass one another and polarise voters, then we will not listen to one another and will lose the opportunity to really get to know one another.
The debate will, to a large extent, be influenced and informed by the Community Survey 2007, which will focus on 280 000 households and give them the opportunity to have their living standards measured. With this ideological diagnostic data, we must then find consensus on at least the three topics the President highlighted in his state of the nation address, social cohesion, poverty alleviation and crime prevention and its eradication.
The PIM, therefore, looks forward to our joint efforts to influence government so that we can affirm and express the idea that human life has equal worth and human beings are equally entitled to political, economic and social right, which allow them to choose a life they have reason to live. I thank you.