Page 3726 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 9 December 1992
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MR HUMPHRIES: As Mr Kaine has indicated, this Government, for a large part of its life, has been using up the Bills we produced when in government and had prepared for it when it entered the halls of power. Now that it has run out of those Bills, it does not have anything left. This Government is running on empty. It is a government with little to say and even less to do.
I have to conclude that the Government is suffering from a total leadership paralysis. That legislative program is left in tatters due, I suspect, to the infighting which is occurring on the fifth floor. I asked Mr Connolly, in question time half an hour ago, what was the reason for the program delay. Perhaps for the first time in this Assembly, I did not get a straight answer from Mr Connolly. I do not expect straight answers from some here; but I did expect one from Mr Connolly, and I did not get it today. The reason is that he knows that this Government has had a dismal performance on its legislative program. Only 31 per cent of its first priority Bills were presented in the Assembly. More than 70 per cent of its Bills were not even put up for the public to see, and that is really a concern. It is either riven by internal strife and fighting or simply tired and worn out. There are not any excuses. There is no reason.
Even comparing it with previous governments, what joy does that bring to the heart of this Government? "We did better than the Alliance Government". You did not, unfortunately; that is one thing that is knocked out. You did not do better than the Alliance Government. Where is your own program? Where is the active, reformist government we have been promised? Where is the legislation? Where is your chance to reshape the ACT in the image of Labor? Where is it? Where are all the initiatives? They have not appeared.
In office for 18 months, this Government does not show any signs that it has an active agenda. Only yesterday, Mr Connolly, on my reckoning, became the Territory's longest serving Attorney-General. Mr Wood became the Territory's longest serving Minister for Education.
Mr Wood: And most distinguished.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, maybe not. On this program you are slightly more distinguished than your colleagues, Mr Wood; but that is about all I can say for you. It is not much of a comparison. The fact is that there has been plenty of time and, with a mandate freshly under their belt, plenty of opportunity to put up to the Territory and to the Assembly a package of change, of initiative, of reform. We have not seen it. This Government is gripping on for grim death. It has battened down the hatches, and it is waiting and hoping that when the recession is over and it emerges in a year or two's time everything is going to be okay. It will not; it will be even worse, because the Government is showing all the signs of having neglected the serious problems facing the Territory, and we have said plenty about that in the past.
Let us look at the Bills list for yesterday. We have a Bills list for yesterday, 8 December, showing people who care to pick it up all the Bills that are presently on the table for the ACT Legislative Assembly to consider. There are 13 Bills on the list. How many are government Bills? How many are Bills from this body of people with 13,000 public servants, or whatever it is?
Mr Kaine: No, 23,000.
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