Page 2990 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 5 December 1989
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Mr Speaker, shallow attempts have been made to sheet home the blame for the planning log jam to community groups and the Residents Rally. This was profoundly cynical, in our view, in its motivations. Of course, members - and particularly members of the press gallery - will recall the Deputy Chief Minister's claims that planning projects were held up by the Rally. This was not borne out by the facts and showed that gamesmanship came before the interests of the construction industry and union members. Just what the game plan of the Deputy Chief Minister is, is still not clear to us. That, of course, will await our access to the documents, which we shall have in a few hours.
Labor's misplaced social priorities were very evident when, in his first reaction to the moving of this motion, the Deputy Chief Minister argued passionately for the casino - not a word about the future of some initiatives taken such as the housing policy review, youth homelessness, the chaos in part of the welfare system and the increasing authoritarianism in the ACT education structure - not a word, Mr Speaker.
What faith can we have in a Deputy Chief Minister who told us on 19 October 1989 that no Minister will have access to, among other things, the identity of casino tenderers, when a few days ago he inadvertently revealed, under media questioning, that he had spoken to a tenderer? What faith can we have in a Deputy Chief Minister who has spoken at length about a casino tendering process at arm's length, of decisions not taken on the required premium for the site or the construction phase, when the Rally comes into possession of a letter dated 2 November 1989 from one of Mr Whalan's senior officials to the proprietor of Seasons Restaurant giving him notice to be out by 30 June 1990?
One of the cumulative reasons for bringing on the no-confidence motion has been the minority Labor Government's disinclination to thump the table with the Federal Government. Despite the requirement at section 71 of the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act that the ACT Government hold consultations with the Commonwealth about staffing implications of the large hand-over of 17,000 public servants, the Chief Minister indicated on 16 November 1989 that when she saw the Prime Minister earlier that week, we believe, she had not initiated such consultations. Clearly, she is empowered by law to present the Commonwealth with a threat to transfer back public servants and functions if we are not funded properly. This has not been done either informally or formally, to our knowledge.
Chief Minister Rosemary Follett was hailed in her own publicity as having been successful at the Premiers Conference in May. Soon afterwards we learned that she had not secured the release of one dollar. Now we are to be given a third of the broken promise, and that only on condition that it be used for restructuring proposals to bring us into line with Grants Commission formulae. This
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