Page 1144 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 1990
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Assembly Business
MS FOLLETT (Leader of the Opposition) (5.30): Mr Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity of the adjournment debate to put on record a couple of my concerns about the operation of this Government. The first concern that I have - and I think it is a concern that is shared by all members of the Opposition - is the incredible lack of government business that is being brought into this Assembly.
On 13 February, the Chief Minister provided me with the Government's legislation program. In his letter he said that that program was the program "for the first half of 1990". The program that he provided to me included 111 items of legislation - 111 of them, ranging across a broad number of topics. However, we have not seen even a tiny proportion of them yet in this Assembly. In fact, I think it has been verging on scandalous the amount of time that has been wasted in this Assembly by Government members in trying to fill in time and trying to make up for their lack of legislation.
I have said any number of times that I believe that legislation is required urgently - in the antidiscrimination area, in the consumer affairs area, and particularly, of course, on the full package of planning, environment, land, leasing and inquiries. We have not yet seen that full package, nor have we had much indication as to when we might do so. Instead, we have had endless debates from Government members on matters that were never in controversy. It is absolutely scandalous.
We have also had a great abuse of question time by the Government members. Time and time again questions from members of the Opposition have been dealt with in the most incredibly cursory and derisory way. I think that I have counted about 10 "I don't knows" to my last few questions. I think that is shameful. There has been very little attempt, particularly by the Chief Minister, to actually supply answers to questions without notice. By contrast, we have had a shameful series of dorothy dixers from Government backbenchers, although they call themselves Executive Deputies, and long, boring and tedious statements from the Minister who has been so questioned - clearly an abuse of question time.
The final point I would like to make is the abandonment by Government members of the policies for which they were elected to this Assembly. The Residents Rally has offended particularly in this regard. I do not know what its members think their erstwhile supporters might be making of their current performance, but certainly they would never have expected Mr Collaery and his colleagues to be approving the closure of Royal Canberra Hospital and the kinds of development proposals that this Government is now putting forward. Residents Rally members have abandoned their policies and their principles. In fact, Mr Speaker,
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