Page 199 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 April 1992
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MR KAINE: I forgot about the bed tax. So much for the Follett Labor Government's commitment to the private sector. We Liberals produced a comprehensive approach to government during the election campaign. We were honest with the community. We published our policies and we openly discussed them. We have no secret agenda. We have no secret platform. We do have a commitment to the ACT and its welfare - not just economic stability, but social stability. Our policies are on the public record, unlike those of the ALP, and our commitment to the Canberra community is to provide stability and accountability. We have a vision for Canberra and the plan to achieve it, all of it on the public record. But where is Labor's? Their program for Canberra is no program at all. They have failed miserably in articulating their aims, and we in opposition will make sure that the Government is held accountable for its every action or inaction over the next three years.
MR MOORE (4.38): I had not realised that this matter was coming up before the resumed debate on the ministerial statement on Aboriginal deaths in custody. I will move that the debate be adjourned, if that is in order with the other members.
Mr Humphries: I am ready to speak now.
MR MOORE: I withdraw, Madam Speaker.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.39): Every government begins its term of office with what I would call a window of opportunity. It is a chance for that government, with whatever mandate it might have from the election just past. I am not sure what mandate this Government gets with about 39-point-something per cent of the vote, but let us say that it is something of a mandate. That government has a chance to bring forward a series of initiatives designed to set the agenda and designed to put in place its vision, its grand scheme for the future of whatever jurisdiction it might be administering. I think, Madam Speaker, that you said in your maiden speech a little while ago that you saw the task that you personally had inherited at this stage as being to establish a new kind of Territory, a socially just Territory, within the life of this Assembly.
The question needs to be asked, "How do you do that? What do you actually do to get that new vision, that new agenda, up and running?". The answer, of course, is that you quickly set the scene very early in your term for what you intend to do, using your mandate, using the window of opportunity, to get things done before matters start to bear down on you and make it difficult to get things achieved before the end of your term. Particularly in an Assembly where there is not a majority government, that is a very important principle to adhere to.
The question also has to be asked, "Where do you do that?". I would have thought that this statement we are considering today, the statement on the program of the third ACT Labor Government, was the place where that ought to appear. But unfortunately, Madam Speaker, if you have a vision for a more socially just ACT or for a Territory which is achieving new and exciting things, you will be sadly disappointed by looking at the statement for those aims. I ran my patented pledgometer over the statement to find some new promises, something actually different from what we have heard before, something real and innovative about what is going to happen in this Territory in the next three years of ACT Labor government. It did not flicker, because there is nothing at all in this
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