Page 2151 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 May 1991
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The Government's actions have been wrong. They have been crowded with mismanagement. It was very interesting to hear the Minister talk about budget blow-outs and financial responsibility. This Minister has had in his hand for 18 months the formula to fix the budgetary situation in our hospitals, and he has done nothing. In fact, the problem has doubled since he became Minister. Moreover, Mr Speaker, since Mr Humphries became Minister we have had a hospital redevelopment program aimed at taking public hospital services away from the people of the ACT. At the same time we have been given bodgie figures, because we now see that there is $35m worth of add-ons as well as a $17.5m budget blow-out. Mr Speaker, that is unforgivable, and he will be remembered, along with his Liberal colleagues, when we get to the next election. There is no doubt about that.
The Alliance Government has to be seen as a cynical political exercise. It was concocted by the Liberals. Under Chief Minister Kaine the unholy alliance was stitched together so that he could deliver his political agenda for his constituency, the business sector. Now, of course, he has milked the Residents Rally cow dry. It is milk dry. It was a cynical move and it has been contrary to the wishes of the people of the Australian Capital Territory. There has been no concern by the Chief Minister about the views of the community. Take, for example, the mismanagement I refer to by Mr Humphries. The Chief Minister never once had the guts to do anything about that mismanagement. Meanwhile, our hospital systems were on the slippery dip, as well as the education system. The Chief Minister has to wear the responsibility for that.
When Mr Collaery spoke on this issue I thought to myself, "What on earth is he doing?". But then it came to me that this is the beginning of a pitiful struggle to regain credibility in the community. It is pitiful because it seems that Mr Collaery is so hypocritical on this issue that he is prepared to do a 180 degrees turnabout on those actions that he took whilst a party to the conservative Alliance Government. He and his Residents Rally colleagues, Norm Jensen and Hector Kinloch, joined with the Liberals and allowed themselves to be milked dry and to deliver Liberal philosophy.
Mr Speaker, they would have got away with it, except that the issue over the leasehold system broke out. You see, Mr Speaker, any house that is built on disloyalty will collapse. That is what this Alliance Government was based on, because each of the parties was disloyal to the other. We had many outbursts of disloyalty from the Residents Rally members. We saw Dr Kinloch being disloyal to the Alliance Government to which he had given his commitment. We saw Mr Collaery disloyal to the Alliance Government to which he had given his commitment. We saw acts of disloyalty from Mr Jensen against the Alliance Government
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