Page 4182 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 23 October 1991
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I am saying that there has not been consultation and that there has not been an adequate thinking through of the processes in the handling of the approach by the NRMA. I hasten to say that this matter came to the attention of the Alliance Cabinet in April of this year. Mr Connolly talks about announcing to the public how this money will be spent. Again, this is Big Brother talking. What Mr Connolly is saying is that there will be $10m in a trust fund to be spent on projects enhancing motoring safety. What did the community have to say about restricting it to projects enhancing motoring safety?
Since 1981 many hundreds - thousands, perhaps - of motorists have gone off the roads or left the Territory. You can equally argue that there are a group of people in the community who will get an immoderate windfall. They will be the current and new motorists - our youngsters, our children who have been licensed in the last year or two. The fact is that there should have been some consultation on how this $10m fund would be quarantined, what the parameters for it would be. Laudable though projects which enhance motoring safety may be - and perhaps the community may have agreed to restricting expenditure to that - we have not had consultation from the Government that promises consultation.
Mr Connolly, when he suddenly became aware of this money in the Estimates Committee, raced through this process without further consultation with the members of this Assembly, on this side of the house at least, and without consultation with the community, particularly members of the community who no longer drive. What about all the aged people who have surrendered their licences but did pay premiums for the last three or four years? Might they not have wanted to say something about the expenditure of this money? Might they not have wanted to know how it should be done, how the trust fund should be managed? Would it not have been far more consultative to have said to the NRMA, "We will appoint a community consultative body and you, NRMA, deal with them, you work that up"?
That is a process we have used in the past in resolving a whole range of issues involving government and private industry. We do use consultative groups. We appoint quite a number of boards and advisory committees. No attempt was made to do it in this case, until after the funds had been identified and quarantined to motoring safety. On the positive side, the matter has been resolved quickly, and I am pleased that the money has been brought within the public purview. But I stress to the members of the house that this is a significant example of non-consultation once again.
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