Page 5430 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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MRS NOLAN: If you say that the Alliance Government proposed this, that is fine. It was done without my knowledge and I had no part in it. I do not support what has been done and I support Mr Stefaniak's disallowance motion.
The issue should also be addressed in terms of safety. I do not necessarily think that one can blame bikes for all of this, and I hope that governments will be looking to address the issue much more in relation to driver education. That is very important, and it is something the Government should be doing. If it is a matter of the revenue you are raising, why did you not go across the board and look at $1 for every car and every bike, or even 50c for every car and every bike?
Mr Connolly: Because we wanted to keep parity with New South Wales across cars and bikes.
MRS NOLAN: I do not think you have kept parity. As I said, you have a situation where the charge is $66 in New South Wales and $105 in the ACT. The difference is that $40 levy, which is paid by everybody in New South Wales, not by just a few. The increase you are asking of those bike owners in the over 600cc category is just too much; it should have been done in a much more staged way. Therefore, Mr Speaker, I will be supporting the disallowance.
MR JENSEN (5.23): We saw an example of the flamboyance of the young Minister opposite this afternoon which was quite entertaining. If they were handing out Oscars, Mr Connolly may have been a candidate. We all know about lies, damned lies, and statistics. We also know about the way people can use graphs. Any of us who have access to a computer program know how very easy it is to make graphs look different, how we can show the difference between the facts and figures just by changing the X and Y axes on a graph with the press of a computer button. We had a little of that this afternoon, with large diagrams flashed all over the place and a little bit of theatrics. I have said in the past and I will say again that Mr Connolly still has his L plates on, and that is appropriate in this debate.
Let us be realistic about this: The Rally supports the proposal to disallow this change. The new ALP Government, when they first came into power, had a perfect opportunity to review this whole process. They did not have to accept the decision that had been made by the Alliance Government.
Mr Connolly: So, you accept that it had been an Alliance decision?
MR JENSEN: I was not a part of the Alliance Cabinet, Mr Connolly. I may have been a member of the Alliance Government, but I was not involved in the decision directly taken by the Alliance Government's Cabinet. Let us get that right. Let us put that on the record, so that everyone knows what is going on.
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