Page 4661 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 27 November 1990
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Mr Humphries: Like what? Give examples.
MR CONNOLLY: I will give you an example. If you are a public servant working in your department and you have the temerity to go on the ABC and indicate your dissatisfaction with Government policy, you get threatened with defamation action from senior public servants. That is an appalling position. It is the tyranny that prevailed in Queensland. It is a tactic of fear and repression. They are scared of opposition from the community. They are scared of free debate out in the community and they proceed to try to gag it. That is what is happening here. Community groups are concerned. They are coming to us with their concerns. They have come to the Leader of the Opposition with their concerns; but they are not game, in the climate that this lot are trying to engender in Canberra, to go public and criticise it, because they are depending on these people for their grants for the next two years. They know that at the end of the day this lot will not be responsible for making those grants for much longer, because come the next election they are gone.
MR STEFANIAK (10.22): I feel constrained to say a couple of things on this. Firstly I refer to Mr Connolly's last point about groups not coming to the Government. I have seen quite a few groups, Mr Connolly. I probably see two or three sporting groups a week who are after funds, and I pass that on to the Deputy Chief Minister and the rest of the Government. They certainly have not stopped coming to see me or, I would think, other members of the Government. I know that my colleague Mrs Nolan sees quite a few groups too, because she has the office next door to mine. So, I do not think you have a monopoly on groups coming to see you. Certainly this Bill has not stopped them coming to see us; nor will it.
It is interesting to note some of the various events that have occurred since self-government which have really raised the community's interest in this Assembly. We have just gone through a very lengthy and tortuous education debate and that certainly raised a lot of interest. There were a lot of demonstrations against your Government, Ms Follett, last year, but there has been a somewhat equivocal attitude in relation to the Community Development Fund.
I would remind members of the Opposition that in fact that fund was started in 1981, as Mr Humphries stated, and I will not go through what he said again. That was by a Liberal Government, the Fraser Government, and it was started for the purposes outlined by Mr Humphries.
In relation to what the three Government members did on the Estimates Committee, I think Mr Collaery, in an aside, probably put it quite well there. But that really has nothing to do with supporting the retention of the Community Development Fund. The Chief Minister said on a number of occasions that he has guaranteed funding for the
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