Page 2301 - Week 08 - Friday, 21 June 1991
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So we have the words again and again. I truly think that the people of the ACT are sick to death of hearing the words. I must admit that I am sick to death of hearing the words. That is all I hear, but I do not see the actions. Rosemary Follett gets up and says, "We were a consultative government when we were in last time"; yet, when there was an opportunity to consult with me on the budget, I was not on that consultative committee. I was not even asked. So, when people are pretending to consult, they should have a little check list to make sure that it actually looks like they did consult rather than assume that everybody will think it has happened.
What can we do in the ACT Assembly to make a difference and to give the people of Canberra an actual say? There can be no better model in Australia - nor, I believe, around the world - than the system operating in the North Sydney Council, introduced by Ted Mack and many other people there. That is a situation where meetings and records are open. All meetings are open. Why not? Some people would say, "You cannot have that. You cannot have the employers along to a meeting when their employees are talking about what will happen to them". Indeed, the records should be open as well. Some people say, "Listen, you could not possibly show the public and put into print how we have made our decisions". Well, that, of course, is a nonsense.
There may be, occasionally, a rare situation where certain legal matters should not be open to public scrutiny, but that would be so rare that one hardly needs to talk about it. Indeed, there might be personnel records within the council, or the State-like Assembly, that may well be confidential, and that is fine. But, if we had a situation where the people could be in on the meetings, let me tell you, schools in the ACT would not have been closed, the Royal Canberra Hospital would not have been closed, and the same would apply to various other deals that some members do not reveal. Members who do reveal them leave other members aghast. They say, "That was all confidential. Listen, what are you doing telling anybody about this - telling the employers that we were saying these things? That is not on". So, meetings and records should be open.
We also should have a precinct system. I think most people have talked about that and have agreed with the general idea. Let us do it. Divide the ACT up into 17, 20, 25, or whatever, different areas where people can have a say. It is the local progress association; it is the local residents group, or whatever you want to call it. It does not matter what you call it. It is simply an organisation of people in grass roots, smaller community areas, where they are given the information on all commercial development proposals before they are introduced and they are given an opportunity to comment. Indeed, the comment does not have to come from them. The members go along to them; they make these groups aware of what the proposals are, not like we had with the Ainslie tip - "We have just closed it" - but "We are considering this". And, while we
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