Page 2023 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 June 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
and swift attention to the accommodation needs of psychiatrically disturbed offenders or persons accused of offences.
We inherited a vast range of problems, most of which in the community services and housing area the Follett-Whalan Government had not even attempted to tackle. We are working our way through those sincerely with the social fabric of the city in mind. I believe that the assumption in this matter of public importance that we are attacking the fabric of society is fatuous and absurd. It is full of hypocrisy. As an example of that hypocrisy - and I trust the media will note it - there was recorded in Hansard on 1 November 1989 a motion moved by my colleague Mr Humphries deploring, among other things, the damaging speculation that the Follett-Whalan Government proposed to close preschools in Canberra, despite a lot of opposition. The speeches in that debate must set new benchmarks for hypocrisy.
Let me read some words from my esteemed colleague Mr Wood at page 2341 of Hansard. When dealing with closures of three schools, and having said that we have to face realities, that Tuggeranong is developing and so on, he said:
We have to recognise that nothing ever stays the same, therefore our system of preschools cannot ever stay the same. We have to adjust to meet the changing circumstances.
He went on to say:
It is a difficult issue ... it requires understanding of the changing demographic and social needs, and that is occurring. The Government has shown that it is responding in a most responsible and competent manner.
Mr Berry, in that same debate about closing preschools, defending his Government, went on to say this - and it was typical of his ideological approach - at page 2347:
I can assure you, Mr Humphries, there is no way that we are going to neglect the frontier suburbs in Tuggeranong. This is precisely the outcome that Mr Humphries wants in order to protect the nice, cosy Liberal areas in the inner suburbs in Hawker and Weetangera where the vote is higher for the Liberal Party. Does he care for the people out in the frontier areas, the people who live in places where the trees are still only two feet high?
Then he goes on to quote some statistics about preschool vacancies in central Canberra and in his conceived Liberal areas of Canberra. I cannot believe, Mr Speaker, the hypocrisy of the final statement by Mr Berry at page 2348, and I read it into the record:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .