Page 4629 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 27 November 1990
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Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is very edifying, but it is not really relevant to this debate. Promises made in another area altogether, with respect, are totally irrelevant to debate about the Community Development Fund Bill.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you for your observation, Mr Humphries. Ms Follett, would you stick to the issue.
MS FOLLETT: Yes. I said that they were not going to enjoy it, Mr Speaker, and they are not. Who could forget either the promises made by the Residents Rally that they would not close Royal Canberra Hospital?
MR SPEAKER: Order, Ms Follett! I would ask you to be more relevant to the issue.
MS FOLLETT: I will. I am getting to a really relevant bit. Of equal relevance is the promise made by the No Self Government Party to abolish self-government.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Ms Follett! Please desist from this line; otherwise - - -
Mr Stevenson: I rise on a point of order, Mr Speaker. That was a sad time. Both names were mixed up together. That is simply not okay. I would ask the Leader of the Labor Party to please - - -
MR SPEAKER: I do not believe that an apology is in order, but still proceed, Ms Follett.
MS FOLLETT: There is no doubt whatsoever that this Government has been built upon broken promises, and the level of funding for the community groups that I have mentioned will in future be entirely a matter for budgetary discretion - entirely subject to the whim of this Government, or to their claims about financial constraints of the time. They have broken every promise they ever made. Why would they keep this one?
One simple demonstration of the fact that the community loses out relates to the fact that the Community Development Fund earned interest, which was then also available for distribution to community groups. Of course, from 1 January, interest earnings on revenue from the TAB and poker machines will now simply accrue to the consolidated fund. It will be gobbled up by the budget as a whole. This is such a blatant rip-off that even the Government members opposite in the recent Estimates Committee hearings came out against it. Just to remind people, those Government members were Mr Jensen - the Chair - Mrs Nolan; and Ms Maher and Mr Stefaniak, who were at times members of that Estimates Committee. I quote from the Estimates Committee's report at page 22. This is the unanimous report of the Estimates Committee, on which the Government had the numbers. They said:
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