Page 1183 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 22 August 1989
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behind the scenes, not related to press releases, certainly unsung by the media - arise from our active, fascinating and productive committee system, and that too is bipartisan, although in the case of Bill Wood, you have to be bipartisan for everybody. And, Bill, I do pay you tribute for the terrific work you have done over those 100 days.
I will not go into detail, but I congratulate all members for these 100 days - all our contributions, especially those of us who are not members of the formal Government. One thinks of occupational health and safety, public accounts, section 19, the move-on Bill, tertiary amalgamation. I will not go through the whole list. Any fair-minded journalist or historian in future will take special note of that committee work. It has been a tremendous learning process and I think the people of Canberra should be grateful for it. But they do not see it. They do not see it, but they will see the results of it one day.
So we exist; we exist and thrive; we exist, thrive and achieve. Yet at the same time there are negatives or qualifications about the preceding 15 weeks since 11 May. Very quickly let me say that I think there has been a failure of this Assembly over 100 days to break away from an adversarial system of government and opposition. We had a chance for a collegiate system but we blew it owing to party rigidities, especially the dinosaur parties - and I had better not go into that. I suppose you could say our party at least is not a dinosaur party. We are now locked into this "In" or "Out" system, and I would prefer a ministry of all the talents.
Secondly, we have had a corporate failure - all of us - to convince the electorate of Canberra of the benefits to the community of what we have been doing together. All too often we see in the media - as I saw in the John Laws column on Sunday - things said about us that we all know are untrue. We have to think about a joint media approach where the whole Assembly lets Canberrans know and lets Australians know of what we have achieved and what we can achieve. We have not achieved a National Museum of Australia. That has already been referred to. I will not go through that again. We have accepted all too easily an administrative and bureaucratic system which surrounds us - this building, its physical nature, our holus-bolus absorption into or takeover by the former ACT Administration. What in fact is in the best interests of the people of the ACT? I do not think we have always addressed that fully.
I think we have also failed in these 100 days to confront the Federal Government on many issues which concern us, and my colleagues have already discussed some of those related to land, finances and taxes. We have failed in these 100 days in our sad inability to excite and enliven the people of Australia about our new enterprise. My friend and colleague Gary Humphries referred to an article in that connection on a previous occasion.
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