Page 1071 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 1991
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fairly dominant self-interest which has been demonstrated by many of the members opposite. They are supposed to serve the people of the ACT. They are supposed to give the people of the ACT priority over their party room squabbles. That is why this Assembly should express its concern at the lack of full and coordinated services for children with disabilities.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (12.00): Mr Speaker, we have heard 10 or 15 minutes, whatever it was, of unmitigated waffle from Mr Berry. Mr Speaker, I am really wondering how much more of this we are going to hear. I suppose that there will be another 10 or 11 months of it, but I have to say - - -
Mr Duby: This is the next big lie.
MR HUMPHRIES: This is the next big lie; yes, Mr Duby puts his finger on it very clearly, and I will come back to that in just a moment. First of all, I want to say that there is no substance in what Mr Berry has said. He has not made a single, substantive allegation about the services provided by this Government for children with disabilities in the ACT. He has spoken for 15 minutes about disunity in the Government; about lack of cohesion; about the fact that we disagree with each other; about the fact that people in the ACT are upset and that they are writing against this Government; about the fact that they have lots of letters about how we are not doing our job; and that they have plenty of evidence that people are dissatisfied and up in arms about this Government.
He then called members of the Government names - the usual fall back position for Mr Berry. There are all the usual tricks, but where is the substance? I have notes here, Mr Speaker, which I brought down with me, on various areas in the question of children with disabilities - children in special schools; children requiring special services or therapy services, things like that; children needing welfare; children with mental health problems or intellectual disability problems; our hostels.
I have nothing to say because Mr Berry has offered nothing for me to criticise. He has offered nothing at all for anybody listening to this debate to take away and say, "This is the Opposition's criticism of the Government's performance in this area. This is what the Government is doing wrong". We cannot say; we do not know. It has not been spelt out. So, Mr Speaker, I am not going to waste the Assembly's time with the speech that I had prepared because, clearly, none of it is relevant. Nothing has been offered up.
Obviously, Mr Berry was caught on the hop here. He obviously did not count on getting this far through the agenda today, and he had not prepared much of a speech, because there is nothing much there. In fact, if you take out "children with disabilities" and put in "hospitals"
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