Page 1796 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 18 October 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
When you look at some of the newspaper comments, you realise the opportunity that was given to national commentators to hold us up to ridicule. Probably a fairly good example was an article in the Financial Review of 5 October. It was quite an extraordinary article, but you must bear in mind the stature of this particular newspaper. It was not the Mirror or Truth that produced this particular article; it was the Financial Review, one of the most respected newspapers in the country. This article on page 16 had the heading, "Setting a city-State's teeth on edge", and it started off:
It is preposterous, runs a certain logic, that a city the size of Newcastle has not yet been made a State. What Newcastle needs in order to be taken seriously is a fully fledged government of its own, not a mere city council. It needs a Chief Minister, it needs a Cabinet, it needs at least 17 full-time members of an Assembly. Perhaps then it will be taken sufficiently seriously to merit being awarded a naval contract or three.
The article goes on in this sort of vein, misrepresenting the concept of self-government, but the justification for it, the opportunity, was provided by that earlier decision. Let me quote again from the same article:
The Canberra Government -
which of course is not correct -
consists of four Liberals, five Labor Party members, four members of the Residents Rally -
It describes the Residents Rally as a suburban greenie NIMBY. Do you know what a NIMBY is?
A member: No.
MR WHALAN: Well, I will tell you. NIMBY stands for "Not In My Back Yard". So the Residents Rally is described as a suburban greenie NIMBY group. It continues:
... three members of the No Self Government Party, and a single representative of the Abolish Self Government Coalition, who has been associated with the extreme right-wing League of Rights.
The article then builds around fluoride:
This has come to a head, of course, with the scandalous decision to remove fluoride from the city's water supply, imperilling the dental health not only of Canberra's 270,000 inhabitants but of the 30,000 residents of nearby Queanbeyan.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .