Page 4627 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 27 November 1990
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MS FOLLETT: Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your protection. The Bills that we are debating give effect to the Government's decision - an extraordinarily bad and untimely decision - to wind up the Community Development Fund and to pay future TAB and poker machine revenues into the consolidated fund. I think it is fair to say that a number of members opposite have not been in Canberra long enough to know - or have had their heads in the sand for long enough not to know - much of the history of the Community Development Fund.
Mr Moore: Or have not been involved in the community for long enough.
MS FOLLETT: As Mr Moore says, they have not been involved in the community for long enough. They are fly-by-nighters - and their behaviour on the CDF is ample proof of that. The Community Development Fund was, in fact, introduced as a trade-off to the community for the levels of gambling that took place and which many people in the community regarded as a social ill. I would be very interested in whether Dr Kinloch has a view on this and whether he believes that it is appropriate now to take away that trade-off from the community.
I would like to say at the outset that a similar proposal was put to the Labor Cabinet last year and was rejected. The Bills, as we have them before us at present, are, in fact, being dealt with by the back door, which is a method which the Liberal Alliance is quite rightly becoming infamous for. They cannot ever face their critics, so they attempt to take actions like this behind closed doors. The Bills were presented to the Assembly by the Treasurer - - -
Mr Duby: Tell that to the media at your conference, Rosemary.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Duby!
MS FOLLETT: You will have to chuck him out.
Mr Jensen: We want the Speaker's job now, do we?
MS FOLLETT: There is a constant rumbling from Mr Kaine's rear there. I can never clearly understand it, but it tends to burble on.
The Bills were presented to the Assembly by the Treasurer only last Thursday, like the one that we have just debated, and their debate here today, less than a week later - in fact, five days later, or three working days in the usually accepted form - is akin to the use of the guillotine. I hope that that feature is not going to become much used in this Assembly, because it is a feature that denies proper debate and it most certainly denies community consultation.
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