Page 3009 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 5 December 1989
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The Government's failure to act in these two areas alone is costing the ACT taxpayer some $10,000 a day in inefficient management - $10,000 a day - which I sheet home directly to the Government sitting opposite. These are problems incidentally which the interim hospital board has responsibly been dealing with, yet this Government would rather slay the messenger than get on with the job of putting our hospital budget back on track.
I note that the Minister's final solution announced only last week for the board was not to sack it, because I suspect he was unable so to do, but to make it subordinate to some half-baked advisory council which he has just sought to create. He has effectively sought to neuter the board and draw its teeth by filtering its advice through a further layer of bureaucracy before reaching the Minister. This approach, I think, is unacceptable to the majority of members in this chamber and, I believe, unacceptable to the majority of members of the wider community. This Government has had seven months to at least begin to come to grips with the hospital issue but, quite frankly, it has not got past square one.
Before concluding I want to make some comments on some calls that have been made by Labor Party figures in this Territory for a new election. I have heard some people liken this no-confidence motion to the sacking of the Whitlam Government in 1975. As I recall, at the time, Mr Whitlam argued that the party with the majority of seats in the House of Representatives, the governing house, had the right to govern. The alliance parties in this chamber have a clear majority of seats here. They represent collectively a considerably larger proportion of the electors as at the last election than does the ALP in this chamber. Those that claim that that majority has no right to form a government, here and now, are arguing against one of the fundamental principles of Westminster democracy.
I want to respond to a couple of points made earlier in debate. We have heard a great many accusations levelled in the last 10 or 12 days about what this new government for the Territory would mean, and most of them, I am sorry to say, have been totally untrue. The Deputy Chief Minister, unfortunately, has been responsible for most of them. He has talked about an orgy of sackings in the public service. Well, time will tell, Mr Speaker, but I submit to you that that is patently untrue. That will become clear to ALP members and I wonder whether they will have the courage to come back in this place and admit that they were wrong.
In particular, I want to mention a comment by Mr Wood. He invited Mr Collaery to rectify a grievous mistake in saying that the Deputy Chief Minister had done something wrong. I invite Mr Wood to make that same rectification today. He put out a statement some days ago saying that the alliance had bought the vote of Mr Stevenson by promising him his policy.
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