Page 2304 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 June 1990
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operated for seven months with virtually no policy statements at all.
These policies are not straight from my own Liberal party, although I would like them to be; nor are they from the Residents Rally; nor from the Independents Group. Our policies represent the consensus of three parties. That is a consensus which I believe is the right formula for leading this Territory through a very difficult time.
We are setting strategies for the long-term management of the Territory in financial travail. If anybody can argue against that, I would like them to put the argument on the table. We are setting strategies for a Territory which is still being disrupted by a very small group of selfish individuals who simply have not yet understood that this Territory is in fact self-governing. And I number amongst those the Labor members opposite. Whenever there is a bit of a problem they run to the Federal Government for help. Part of the responsibility of this Government is to produce a sound formula for the future, and that is not easy.
I refer to an apt analogy made by Matthew Abraham on ABC radio on Wednesday morning. He said that the ACT had problems with both recurrent funding and our capital expenditure program. He went on to say:
Our recurrent funding might be likened to what a householder spends on food, for example, and our capital expenditure program might be likened to the home mortgage.
He is quite right. All citizens struggle to keep both elements of their budget within the bounds of what they can afford - what they spend on everyday commodities and what they invest in their mortgage. These are the basic problems that the Commonwealth is attempting to ignore, and they are the facts of life that we in the ACT have to live with.
Even the Federal member for Canberra is trying to bury her head in the sand over this. She is fobbing off her responsibilities and those of her Government onto the Commonwealth Grants Commission. Mrs Kelly says, "These are not our problems. They are the problems of the Commonwealth Grants Commission". What a cop-out for the Labor Government that handed us a disgraceful situation less than two years ago. Mr Speaker, we have had to make some difficult decisions, but I believe that the Alliance Government's credibility has already been firmly established, despite the meanderings and the rhetoric of these weak people opposite. We have set an impressive record of achievement during our six months in office. Each of the Ministers and each of their Executive Deputies have shown themselves to be truly committed and dedicated to their respective responsibilities in governing the ACT and no member of this Government has opted out from the governing process. All of us are involved.
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