Page 2291 - Week 08 - Friday, 21 June 1991
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You are right. In the process of those three rounds of community consultation, the community told us that it did not like some of the things that we were putting forward. So, three times we rewrote the final draft to incorporate, as best we could, the wishes of the community. And now you say, "You were not consultative, and you took too long". The fact of the matter, Chief Minister, and you acknowledged it yourself, is that when you go to the community for consultation it slows the process down. You must listen, and you cannot, at the end of the day, say, "Well, we have been all through that, and we have heard what you have said; but we really do not care, because Labor policy is this, and this is what we are going to do". So, it is a two-edged sword.
Ms Follett acknowledges the budgetary constraints. I have to say that it is the first time in 2 years that the Chief Minister, whether as Chief Minister or as Leader of the Opposition, has ever acknowledged that we have a financial problem in the Territory. I hark back to her words, "The nip and tuck approach will fix it". Ms Follett has now had 10 days, and she has had a look at next year's budget for potential. And she was so frightened by what she saw that she ducked off to say to Mr Kerin, "Can you give us a few more million?".
Now she knows that there is a budgetary gap. I have been telling her that for three years and now she acknowledges that there is a budgetary gap. I hope that she will have the good grace, when she brings her budget down shortly, to acknowledge, now that she is confronted with it, that there always was a problem and that the nip and tuck approach will not work unless it is $30m here and $50m there. So, I must say that I am delighted that the Chief Minister, who is again the Treasurer, now acknowledges after all this time that there is a bit of a problem and that we had better do something about it.
The only other comment that I would like to make at this time is in connection with the Alliance Government's legislative program. I believe that the Alliance Government put through a great deal of legislative business in the year and a half that it was in office. It was a very heavy workload. We brought down a lot of legislation and there was a great deal of it that had not hit the table in the Assembly when we lost office.
The Chief Minister acknowledges that much of it was good legislation. I hope that it is not delayed. I hope that we do not go through another round of community consultation to further slow down some of that legislation. It is good legislation; it is important legislation; and it needs to be put on the table quickly now, so that the Assembly can deal with it before we get into the next round of pre-election campaigning which will simply stop everything until after the next election. Much of that legislation simply cannot wait while we have another election fight and put it on the backburner for a six- or eight-month period.
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