Page 1184 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 22 August 1989
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Our image has not been improved throughout the country, and we need to work on that. We are too parochial, too incestuous and too self-congratulatory, and may I remind us all, including myself: "Pride goeth before a fall". We need to let all Australians know then that their capital city is in good hands on their behalf. So I call on all of us - - -
MR SPEAKER: Order! Dr Kinloch, your time has expired.
MR HUMPHRIES (5.31): Mr Speaker, I come to close off this debate in the remaining 10 minutes and I note in doing so, first of all, that the Government has taken no opportunity in the course of this debate to say anything whatsoever. That astonishes me, quite frankly. This matter of public importance as raised by the Opposition Leader is very neutrally expressed - - -
Mr Whalan: If you cut yours down to five minutes, I will speak for five.
MR HUMPHRIES: I am sorry, you have lost your chance. I have 10 minutes worth of stuff to say about your performance, and you can sit and listen to it.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Please address your comments through the Chair.
MR HUMPHRIES: This matter of public importance is neutrally expressed. It is not the Government's poor performance or the Government's lack of performance; it is the Government's performance. This is an excellent opportunity for it to stand up and justify this outrageously self-congratulatory document released to the media a few days ago and explain what it is about the performance of the Government that is so worthy of congratulations - an excellent opportunity in the Assembly, in the parliament of the ACT - but the Government has not taken any advantage of that opportunity.
We have seen nothing at all from Government members in this debate; and why? Perhaps it is because the audience here is a little bit more critical than that which they might find in the media. They can sell a load of rubbish to the media that they cannot sell here in the Assembly. I wonder whether we will see more examples of this kind of contemptuous attitude towards the parliament of the ACT and whether the Government will continue to pursue its media campaign, its self-aggrandisement campaign in the media, at the expense of coming to this Assembly and explaining to this Assembly what it is doing and why it is doing it.
Mr Speaker, as I said in a press release of my own earlier this week, I think this is a very sad anniversary. It is, as I said in my release, 100 days of wasted opportunity. It is wasted because, as I have said before in this place and I say again, I believe, irrespective of our positions on self-government before we came to this place, as participants at the highest level of self-government in the ACT, it is our
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