No, I am not prepared to take any question, especially from him. We hope that when it falls, you'll come back and experience the democratic feeling that there is in the ANC. There is no democracy were you are, so come back home.
The weaknesses that the Department of Labour considered there are in the services and information technology capacity of the labour centres are being addressed, both in regard to legislation and budgetary allocation. We believe that more investment will be required in the coming financial year to ensure that we improve human capital in this regard.
In the past we have seen the stance of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, helplessly trying to salvage something from the labour crises and disputes that we have experienced. We believe that empowering the CCMA to intervene in some of these disputes is marked progress.
We know that there are many employers who allow trade unions to organise, but in many instances, due to the low levels of literacy among workers and their fear of joining the unemployment queues, workers are forced by malicious and sinister employers to choose between the union and their work. We believe that legislation meant to empower the Minister to regulate the minimum requirements for the recognition of the rights of unions is important progress.
It will be the responsibility of this Parliament, through its constituency offices, to ensure that workers and employers, trade unions and employer organisations, and all South Africans, know the new amendments and understand their impact on whatever businesses they will be involved in.
Similarly, it can only be through the knowledge of and capacity to comply with these laws that employers will see hope for their sustained entrepreneurial endeavours, and not despair, in which they have to shut up shop.
There has been talk about how the ANC has placed the youth wage subsidy in abeyance. I think it is no longer about whether the ANC has put that aside or not. It's about bitterness regarding how Cosatu and its general- secretary have ended the flirting of the leader of the DA and countering the approaches and advances that she has been making. I also think that based on that bitterness, since she cannot take to it kindly, she has even arranged through the police that a march will take place so that she can see Zwelinzima Vavi. This is not to hand over a memorandum - I doubt that. It is instead to hand over a bunch of flowers! [Laughter.] We should not worry about all the other things that have been said. The leader of the DA must deal with rejection nicely, just as she has dealt with rejection by the voters of South Africa.
More importantly, there is the hon Motau, who speaks like a fake James Bond. He reads newspapers, and then finds information and presents it as a discovery. The department has briefed the portfolio committee on the issues that he raised about Siemens. It is through the initiatives of the department that we know today that the first ever public-private partnership was a massive failure and that interventions are being made to ensure that we build capacity in the department and learn lessons in order to ensure that the mess that we all know of is not repeated.
What is important is the commitment made by the department through the transfer and exit programme to ensure that we do not have similar problems. It cannot be through the genius of the hon Motau. It is information that we all have. Therefore, he cannot come here and present himself as the discoverer of information that we all know about and are dealing with.
We are quite worried. We have met workers on farms, domestic workers and workers in the construction industry. Instead of their focusing on real issues that affect workers throughout the whole country, this is what opposition parties have chosen to do, especially No 4 or 5 of the opposition parties, called Cope, which is folding anyway. It wants to try to play politics instead of looking at what is in the budget. Hopefully - hopefully! - they will look at the budget. I don't understand it when someone renders their views for three minutes and then, at the end of the day, says they will support the budget!
It is indicative that this budget is the best and we applaud the Minister for having received the first ever clean audit.
I also don't understand why, when the Department of Labour has received a clean audit, the DA says that audits do not indicate the levels of service delivery. In every election the DA goes all out and says that they have had clean audits here and clean audits there, when we know that those clean audits are not a reflection of how clean Khayelitsha, Langa and Gugulethu are. Today they have been making a noise about the Department of Labour's getting an unqualified audit, and today, because we have that, they want to come up with other magical reasons as to why we should not accept this audit. We in the ANC support this budget. Thank you. [Applause.]