Page 4132 - Week 13 - Thursday, 2 December 2021
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I apologise for the cancellation of those events and to anyone who was very much looking forward to them. I am still very proud that we will have I-Day tomorrow and there will still be many online engagements to participate in. I encourage everyone to find out what is happening in your area and online and look forward to participating in those events.
Valedictory
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (5.47): Mr Rattenbury asked me to speak because we are waiting for Ms Stephen-Smith to come down. I was not going to make a speech. Be careful what you wish for, Mr Rattenbury, because this is my 14th one of these. I must say, after hearing quite a few self-congratulatory speeches from the socialists opposite, the Labor Party and the Greens, about how wonderful they are and what a fantastic job they have been doing, I found it pretty nauseating, to be honest. I found it difficult to raise too much Christmas cheer. I am probably a little bit like the police out there who are—
Mr Davis: You are the Grinch!
MR HANSON: Yes, no doubt I am the Grinch, because out there, spread way too thin on the ground are our police. I wonder what they think about us knocking off for Christmas on 2 December, members, whilst they are out there spread thin. Their association is saying that they are hundreds of members short, to the extent that if you report a crime now you are going to be told, “Do it online and it may or may never be investigated.”
When you hear all of the self-congratulatory “Aren’t we a wonderful government” comments that we have just heard this evening and that we heard last night, to be frank, it is difficult for me to stomach it. That is why I was not going to say anything. So, as I said, Madam Speaker, be careful what you wish for.
We debated teachers this year—teachers who are still out there in the classrooms working hard towards the end of the year, They do not break up for a few weeks, while we all knock off before the end of the year. They are in split classrooms, being exploited, as the union says, not only in terms of the $75 million of unpaid overtime that the union has calculated but also in terms of their health and wellbeing by being in a position where they are doing so much overtime and are in split classrooms.
I look across just about every area of government and service delivery—it could be health and the absolute fiasco, the disaster, that is the rebuilding of the Canberra Hospital that this government first promised back in 2011. I heard all the self-congratulatory Christmas celebrations then as well: “Aren’t we all doing a wonderful job? We all care about the nurses. We are building a new hospital.” We are still waiting for it. There is no new hospital, which this government promised to build well over a decade ago. It has not eventuated, because this government promises to do things and does not do them. Mr Rattenbury is nodding his head. I do not know; is it my speech or is he just nodding at something else? But he should agree, because where is the hospital that we were promised? That is why, when someone turns up to
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