Page 2028 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 June 1990
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be the asbestos removal program. As we all know, the asbestos removal program has been an absolute scourge on the ACT. We were left in a dreadful financial position by the world's greatest Prime Minister, as he was described by Mr Berry earlier today.
The Federal Labor Government said, "We don't give two hoots about what's happening in the ACT. It's your problem. You try to make some good out of it". Well, that was too hard for the Labor Government when they were in power here; that was just something that they could not face the responsibility of doing at all. It is this Government that has bitten the bullet and has negotiated. As a matter of fact, the first achievement of this Government was to negotiate removal of asbestos from Canberra, to the tune of some $40m, which was long overdue. Is that, I ask you, Mr Speaker, attacking the fabric of society? Of course not.
I look at other things that have gone through, things that we have fixed that the other side had left in a bad and parlous state. We have only to remember the train service fiasco that was in place when we arrived here. It was up to the ACT Government to negotiate with the New South Wales Government and to fix that service. We provided the ACT with a better train service than we inherited from the previous Government. In matters of transport, Mr Speaker, I guess there are other areas, too.
Mr Wood: Like what? Tell us about them.
MR DUBY: One that has been pooh-poohed by the Opposition - and actually I will remind Mr Wood of this - was the removal of commuter parking from Reid, Braddon and Turner, the inner north suburbs here, which was an absolute scourge on the residents of the inner city. I can remember to this day, Mr Speaker, talking to those opposite and saying, "What are we going to do about this dreadful situation that is afflicting the residents of the inner north?". Do you know what their answer was? It was, "We don't care. The people who are parking there come from Tuggeranong and they vote Labor. The people of the inner north do not vote for us, so we do not care about them". That was the response we got; that is the sort of response we can expect.
There have been other things that we have achieved that they could not do. I refer to things like the introduction of telephones on the parkway, which apparently was too hard for the previous Labor Government. We have introduced the seniors card to provide senior citizens with the facility to travel.
Mrs Grassby: You've done a great job on the train service! We've hardly got one now.
MR DUBY: Mr Deputy Speaker, you will notice from the interjections that the pack has come back from the waiting room. I wonder what they have got out there in that little cocktail cabinet. Anyway there we go. The seniors card
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