Page 5231 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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why any Minister who felt at all responsible for his duties in the Territory would, in all conscience, leave the Territory in the hands of these people. From the Labor Party's point of view, Mr Speaker, there is some political advantage in that because it would be to our advantage to see the Government making all of these mistakes, but one cannot sit back and just take advantage of it without having some concern for the future of the ACT.
We know that Ministers Duby and Collaery are not particularly interested in the future of the ACT, but one would have hoped that the Liberal Party members, who describe themselves as the other major party in Australia, might have some concern as well and look as though they are prepared to work to protect the Territory. Clearly, they do not care either. So, Mr Speaker, it is a serious matter for the Territory that the management of the place is being left in the hands of these two Ministers.
One has to look at the performance of the Ministers who are going on holidays. Mr Humphries has had the blowtorch on his belly of late and I can understand why he might want to get out of the Territory; but he is, after all, responsible for the greatest damage that has been done to the ACT in recent times. He is the one who is responsible for the destruction of the health system and the education system. If we could get a guarantee that he would stay away it would be fine, but he is the one who is going to have to wear the responsibility. He ought to be here to continue to receive the pressure from the community for the damage that he has done to those very important facilities - education and health.
The Chief Minister has demonstrated what I would describe as very weak leadership in this matter. It has been aptly said by Mr Wood that the Chief Minister did not seem to have any control over the situation and his Health Minister is able to romp off on holidays without much association with him. In fact, it has been said that the Chief Minister did not really know that he was going to head off until the tickets were bought. I suspect that that will not be accepted well in the community. Any Chief Minister who is not able to exercise more control over his ministerial colleagues can aptly be described as weak and, dare I say it, incompetent.
A Labor administration would never allow such a thing to occur. Whilst the Government members opposite are keen to reflect on the few months that Labor was in office, they should also reflect on the fact that it was on the job all of the time and provided a great deal of support for the community in those very early days of self-government here.
Mr Speaker, it is most important that we draw attention to the fact that these Ministers are going on holidays, because I think the community really needs to consider - if they need any more exposure of the performance of this
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