Page 1341 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 12 May 1993
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CITY COUNCIL AND LORD MAYOR
MR STEVENSON (12.03): I move:
That this Assembly calls on the Commonwealth Parliament to take the necessary actions to replace our current state-like form of government with a City Council and Lord Mayor.
Madam Speaker, the Abolish Self Government Coalition was formed to be the voice of the electorate. Canberrans never wanted a State-like government. They still do not. Our polls of thousands of people over the last four years have shown this again and again. Today I will present arguments to answer three questions: First of all, should self-government be abolished? Secondly, can it be replaced with a Canberra city council? Thirdly, are there methods available to achieve that?
We all understand that in 1978, for the first time ever in the ACT, the people of Canberra by themselves were asked a question at referendum. They were asked what form of government they wanted. They were given three choices. Seventy per cent said that they wanted some form of government other than the current State-like Legislative Assembly. The Abolish team was formed to give the people a voice where they had no voice, to stand up for the constitutional law and to get rid of this State-like self-government and replace it with a Canberra city council.
Madam Speaker, we do not have self-government. Again and again in this Assembly people have not been given the right to be self-governing. Their wishes have been trampled on. Firstly, Federal politicians refused to listen. Now, unfortunately, it is often the local politicians who refuse to listen. By all means let us call this place a Legislative Assembly, but we should never accept the misnomer and the myth of self-government.
Let us look at the difference between the current Legislative Assembly and a city council and lord mayor. The difference is simple. A State - in our case the Legislative Assembly - has the responsibility for health, education and policing. A municipal council, a city council, would look after roads, rates, rubbish, development, dogs and drains. The State-like functions of our Assembly and of any electorate make up some 80 per cent of the overall budget. If you look in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles and you go back to 1600, you will find that "municipal" means "self-governing form of council". Recently Kate Carnell was asked by Matthew Abraham:
What if the people say, "We want a City Council"?
On behalf of Liberal members and the Liberal Party, she said:
... yesterday we undertook that if that's what the people of Canberra want, some research we did a number of years ago suggested that the people of Canberra really wanted a city council style government, rather than one that had Chief Ministers and big cars and all those sorts of things and if they really want that then the Liberal Party will undertake to see how we can implement that ... possibly get the federal legislation changed if that's what it takes.
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