Page 1003 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 1991
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MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General and Minister for Housing and Community Services) (4.04): There are two political groups in the ACT community who trade off ignorance, prejudice and ideological standpoints and who fall like a vulture on every issue that can sway people who probably do not have time to take a very full interest in public affairs. I refer, of course, to the Abolish Self Government candidate and the Labor element in this community. Both trade off ignorance and prejudice. They use the same language. I was sitting here this afternoon thinking what a similarity there is between the two when we hear the language, when we hear of the atrocities, the banishments, the lack of consideration - all that language used by those two groups, the Abolish Self Government and the shortly to be abolished around Australia Labor Party.
Mr Connolly: We will be here when the Residents Rally is but a distant memory.
MR COLLAERY: I suggest that you read Max Walsh in the last Bulletin to see where your Labor Party is going. Ms Follett made a number of statements, once again in line with the usual way the Labor Opposition acts on this floor. They do not back it up. She failed to respond to interjections to indicate whether she had toured every room of the Weston Creek Community Service, like I did recently. She did not respond to that.
There has been no reduction of community services at Weston Creek. I am saying that as Minister. I have been there and have spoken at length with the coordinator there. There is an aged drop-in service which is housed in a west-facing, triangular shaped room. There is a youth drop-in centre at the other side of the triangle which is unfortunately placed - it was placed before we were in government - opposite Matilda's Tavern. Sharing Places, with which I have constant and very meaningful contact, is behind and below the community hall, and the Pooh Bear's Occasional Care is there as well.
Ms Follett said that there had been a diminution of those services. There has been no diminution of those services. The drop-in centres for youth and the aged are where they were before this process started. I will come back to what I see is the great future for the Weston Creek Community Centre, but I want to deal with the facts. Ms Follett also put into the record that the Weston Creek Community Service does not know their lease conditions. Let me put this on the record. I went out there and asked for a copy of the lease and they gave it to me. They gave me the lease. I did not have a copy in my ministerial office; so I went out there with a ministerial staffer and I was given a copy of the lease.
They know their lease conditions on the Brierly Street frontage. They know them full well. They were also interested in expanding their accommodation on the Brierly Street frontage and there has been some negotiation taking
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