Page 1175 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 22 August 1989
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The Chief Minister herself is easygoing. She needs to be a lot tougher with at least one of her colleagues. We need to keep the view in mind that the people of the ACT wish to ensure that they are getting value for money and that we have the best interests of the Assembly in mind.
The 100 days statement lists announcements, attendances and a whole range of issues which, as my colleague Mr Kaine pointed out, are often proposals or issues that really do not mean achievements. They simply amount to a pleasant musing over the last 100 days, spent pleasantly on the fifth floor while, as my colleague Mr Kaine said, we stood out there with the members of the press, banished to the outer square where we began, in the rain, in the wind, often, putting over our own views and protests about the 100 days.
Mr Speaker, the other issue of course is that one of the achievements mentioned is the re-establishment of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. We have given this Government an equal opportunity. It has not taken the offer, and it will need protection soon from its own stalwart supporters, in the way of the unions and the federations, as my colleague Mr Moore will mention.
Truly, there are achievements mentioned here with which we differ seriously. The announcement of a 24-hour mental health crisis service is a tokenistic gesture. We have been saying in the Rally that we needed a proper mental health facility for months in this Territory. People are released from ward 12B of the Woden Valley Hospital in circumstances where they need a halfway house. They do need further surveillance and compassionate assistance. We do not have it in the Territory. We need it for those people and we need it additionally for those people who are facing legal process, but we have got a mental health crisis service. It is wholly inadequate.
Mr Speaker, another proposed announcement is that we are going to bring the federal Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission here. Even our colleague Dr Tomlinson of ACTCOSS says that the Government's human rights record is woeful. To bring its own mechanism back here when it has failed to properly protect human rights, when it has failed dismally and signally in the areas in which I have been involved, is not the way to go. We are old enough and big enough to have our own protective mechanism established here within existing resources.
There are other issues such as measures to tighten stamp duty and payroll tax. The pejorative word is "tighten". This is an adversarial comment. It should really be "measures to review stamp duty and payroll", but we see the ideological word "tighten". If only people knew how hard it is for businesses in this town to survive, how difficult it is for young couples to get their stamp duty together, but this has got to be called a "tightening" process. I think
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