Page 4893 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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Once we get down to the end of this motion, we come to the crux of it. Term of reference No. 3 is the catalyst. If this Government had not acted so inequitably, if they had not acted without the consultation they shout about, there would not have been an issue on the table. So, it has to be included as a term of reference. For the Minister or anybody else in the Government, confronted with 12 members of the Assembly who say "We agree on this", to say "We will not accept your terms of reference" shows a gross arrogance, a gross disregard of the political process, a gross disregard of what democracy is supposed to be about.
If they are not about to respond to the wishes of 12 of the 17 members of this Assembly, one has to ask: To whom do they respond? They respond only to the Caucus of the Labor Party. They respond to the faceless men out there. They are not interested in public opinion. Mr Berry came up with a throwaway line when Mr Duby was on his feet: "Oh, you are only looking for a vote". When you backed off a few minutes ago and agreed to conduct an inquiry, you were looking for a vote, because you knew that the weight of opinion was against you. The only way you thought you could salvage yourselves was to say, "We agree that there should be an inquiry. Do not tell us about your terms of reference, do not tell us what you want the inquiry to cover, do not tell us that it is urgent; but of course we will conduct an inquiry".
Mr Stevenson made the point very eloquently: It is the responsibility of this Government to respond, as they claim to do, to the wishes of this community. They are not free to respond only to the initiatives of the Labor Party and the interests they serve, whatever they are. Perhaps they might put them on the table one day and tell us whose interests they are serving. They are certainly not serving the interests of the community on this issue. It is a sad commentary that the Opposition has to force such an inquiry, that it has to force this Government to go out and consult. They claim that they do it constantly, but they do it only when this Assembly imposes the requirement on them. They reject this proposal and the terms of reference at their political peril.
MR COLLAERY (4.06): Mr Speaker, I want to inject some caution into this debate. When the Labor Party stood for election in 1989, its non-government schools policy stated:
An ACT Labor Government will continue to provide recurrent and capital funding to non-government schools according to current practice.
If you read the budget papers you will see that the current practice has been changed. That is the essential situation. So, whatever it is, it is a breach of an election pledge.
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