Page 2935 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 August 1990
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Commonwealth Minister. You appropriated all the funds that would have gone for youth refuges. You had no intention of opening a women's refuge. You knew the money was not there and you know full well that your advisers told you that you could not do what you did. It was a very deceptive thing to do in the women's budget, and we await with interest the findings of the Public Accounts Committee on that little stunt.
The other matter that concerned me - because I had pressed both of these issues on you, Mr Berry, when I was in Opposition - was the 24-hour mental health clinic attached to, possibly, the Woden Valley Hospital. That did not happen. But in their budget they put a measly $160,000. That $160,000 went nowhere near the cost. It was cosmetic. There were so many items in this budget that were cosmetic. All they had the courage to do was to do a little trimming stunt for their budget, and they left us with the job of really significant cuts.
There is another thing that the Labor Party is practising in this Territory - and we saw Mrs Grassby do it. She got many of the aged tenants of the Northbourne Flats out. She issued press releases saying we were going to sell off the Northbourne Flats and redevelop them. She still continues this. Labor members proceed to alarm their electorate. This is an Opposition that exploits the vulnerability of its populace and some of its supporters, and it alarms them.
We saw Mr Berry say the other day that we were reducing the number of public hospital beds.
Mr Berry: It is true.
MR COLLAERY: Well, we are not. It is rubbish. You have union representatives on the board - the steering committee board - and they know the facts. The reason why this bunch here has very little support from the trade union movement at the moment is that the union movement has been fully consulted on just about everything we are doing and they are part of most of the processes of our government. Our boards have unions on them wherever we have appointed them. We offer that representation that you did not because of your factional problems when you were in government. We do it. They know what is going on - and that is why the unions are not out supporting you, Mr Berry, or your left wing Stalinist camp.
The fact is that with these sorts of scurrilous documents, referring in the most intemperate language to personalities in government, the Opposition believes it will increase its electoral support. Senator McMullan told Pru Goward last May that there was a difficulty in maintaining the neighbourhood school system, and my colleague Mr Humphries will outline that further. But the inconsistency, of course, is between these people who purport to be Labor Party members in the ACT and what their Federal colleagues
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