Page 241 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 May 1992
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this process, for the time and the effort that went in on the part of public servants, of Ministers and so on, what did the ACT get out of it? Madam Speaker, I do not think that what we see in this statement by the Chief Minister really warrants the effort that has been put in.
What goals did the ACT set for itself before it arrived? Initially, none at all. The Chief Minister was very reluctant to be drawn on what exactly was going to happen at this conference, of any significance or impact to the ACT. She was prodded by the Leader of the Opposition on the weekend: "What exactly are you going to do when you get to this conference? What do you aim to achieve? Can we have some objectives, please, by which to measure, by your own standards, the success or otherwise of your attendance at this conference?". Of course, it would be very easy to go and say, "I am not planning anything in particular", and come out with something as a result of that because you cannot do much worse than nothing.
However, with the prompting that we generated on this matter, she announced that she was going to fight hard to protect the ACT - a laudable sentiment, but not much of substance. She went on to mimic State Premiers in talking about certainty of funding and guaranteed levels of revenue, but, again, nothing tangible; and, of course, as the Opposition Leader has indicated, she came away with nothing from that process.
Now, we have nothing to argue with here. There is out of this conference very little that we can say has benefited the ACT. We have the promise of some discussion in the future, some further meetings in the future, which might produce something of value to the ACT. That will be a debate for another day. But for the moment we have nothing to point to, the Government has nothing to point to, which you can claim with any pride is a great achievement. I will come to the meagre semi-achievement that has been referred to in the statement.
The Chief Minister says that the meeting was not actually intended to make any hard decisions; but, of course, Madam Speaker, she has said that now, after the meeting is over, rather than beforehand. This is a fall-back position, quite clearly. The fact of life is that what we should be talking about here is micro-economic reforms across the whole of Australia and in particular in the ACT.
Ms Follett: Like roads, rail, electricity.
MR HUMPHRIES: Those, Madam Speaker, are efforts and achievements being put on paper by other States and Territories, not by the ACT. We have very little to say about those matters, very little to contribute about those matters. I think, Madam Speaker, that we could have done rather better.
Let us look at some of the micro-economic achievements that we have talked about in the past in this Assembly, the sorts of things, with respect, that the Prime Minister would be talking about ahead of things like road and rail, things that in this Territory's context, in particular, are eating up revenue which we do not have in areas of education, of health, and of policing. Those are areas where the ACT needs most vital micro-economic reform and it is not good enough for us to hitch a ride on the back of the States, talking about rail, air and road transport reforms, when in fact those have relatively little impact on the ACT.
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