Page 3246 - Week 11 - Thursday, 13 September 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
what the community thinks and it does not have any intention of finding out. The Government is only interested in itself and in what it wants to do. It was the Government who wanted to close schools, not the people. It was the Government who wanted to close Royal Canberra Hospital, not the community. It was the Government who wanted to close Ainslie Transfer Station, not the community. And it is the Government who wanted to close our health centres, but it is the community who will stop it.
Secondly, Mr Speaker, this is a lazy Government. It is a Government which has trouble doing even basic things after 10 months in office. This Government has failed to implement planning legislation. It has failed to implement human rights legislation. It has failed to establish a rental bond board, and it has failed to implement budget initiatives funded last year, like the mental health crisis service and the domestic violence refuge. It is, in fact, a lazy Government, an uncaring Government, whose budget will burden the Canberra community with higher taxes, fewer jobs and services and a reduced standard of living.
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (3.29): Mr Speaker, there was a very great ambivalence about what the Leader of the Opposition just addressed the house with. Ambivalence seems to permeate her office, and nowhere is this ambivalence more obvious than in these comments I have noted down about the abolition of the CDF fund. Ms Follett described it thus, "Another dubious area of the budget is the decision to abolish the CDF fund". That typified the whole speech from the Leader of the Opposition. It was a hedged statement. On one side this, on one side something else, but no clear statement as to how she would govern this Territory and bring down an alternative budget - no clear statement at all.
Let me tell you why. In the CDF area, for example, our decision was described as dubious. She did not say she agreed with it or she disagreed with it. She described it as dubious. Let me quote from the ALP election policy on funding community organisations. Let me quote from the ALP pre-election policy on the CDF, because this is amazing:
An ACT Labor Government will ensure that the major community organisations which received funding under the Community Development Fund will receive funding directly from the ACT budget.
How is that? How is that for an about-face? It is a volte-face of the greatest order.
Reading on in ALP policy:
This will avoid the demeaning and expensive cap-in-hand approach of the past. Major community organisations will receive regular and assured funding for their core budgets.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .