Page 603 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 4 July 1989
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The Chief Minister is not seen, even though she purports to be a Labor Chief Minister, to express sympathy with those who lack power and who suffered so much in Queensland. Looking at the ACT, Mr Speaker, we see still cloistered decision making on important issues, particularly planning. We have seen a national capital planning authority issue a guideline for eight-storey development on Northbourne Avenue, with no reference at all to the Assembly yet and no compliance strictly with the Act which created it only a few months ago. We see the beginnings again of the Canberra club scene in the Administration, and it must not be allowed to prosper again.
What Mr Fitzgerald is telling all Australians is fundamentally that power corrupts; Queensland corrupted itself. His message to us, if we are to respond to it today before we have even read it, is surely that, if I am the Chief Minister, power will not corrupt my Government. The Chief Minister should have said, Mr Speaker, that her Government will join with us in setting the new stage for the ACT, that the whole Assembly - all of us - needs to do these things. Instead, we have a cheap throwaway line at today's little gang-up effort outside by the Building Workers Industrial Union.
We have seen opportunism through this paper, and we have seen a number of conclusions reached, which surely are not evident from even the informed reportage. One must congratulate the Canberra Times for its extensive coverage today and the detail it has been able to give us. Some of the conclusions the Chief Minister draws - for example, the lesson to do with the power of the Executive - are all very strange when it is only a few days since the Deputy Chief Minister sitting opposite me suggested that we close this Assembly down for most of the spring, that we do not even sit during the Federal budget period. That was suggested to me and my colleague Mr Jensen at a meeting.
Also we see this Government already framing issues for debate and organising, I am sure, a demonstration outside the doors of this Assembly today. Demonstration is very, very healthy - excellent. The Residents Rally congratulates all who organised it. The Rally, of course notes that the Deputy Chief Minister chose to use that debate to score some cheap political points before the only people left in this town who will applaud anything he says. The Chief Minister needs to demonstrate to us that she can control her Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Speaker, in situations where we are trying to achieve some level of understanding on important issues, such as the Bill that the Liberal Party proposes to introduce shortly to this Assembly.
The upheaval in Queensland that requires Mr Fitzgerald to recreate the criminal justice system in that State clearly is not one that we are going through; no other State has gone through it. Clearly the establishment of a permanent criminal justice commission in Queensland does not have any
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