Page 1367 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 12 May 1993
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There has been a great deal of discussion about health, law and order, and education. In fact Mrs Carnell, when she was talking on the radio - she denied a little while ago that she had said something like this - said that we talk about lots of things in the Assembly, including drugs, "when what we really care about is roads, rates, rubbish" - I repeat, "roads, rates, rubbish", municipal things - "education for our kids" - something different - "and those sorts of nitty-gritty life-type issues".
Mrs Carnell: It is not right.
MR WOOD: So the clear implication was that you really talk about a council-type administration. It is very clear. There it is. You go and have a read of it. If you wish, I could read the whole paragraph into the record.
There is a cynicism abroad - not from the Liberal Party, I do not believe, but from Mr Stevenson - about returning powers to the Federal Government or somewhere else. I do not think Mr Stevenson believes that if we gave education and health and whatever else back to the Feds there would be one more cent coming from that source to run those institutions. In fact the Federal Government will continue on the course it has been on for some years now of progressively reducing revenue to the ACT. That will not change. That is the reason we got self-government; it was to bring about these reductions. It might sound attractive to the community to give these things back and then the good old days will return, but that is just not on. It will not happen. The reductions will continue and, as Ms Follett said a little while ago, we will have absolutely no say in the way that things are done.
The Liberals are jumping up and down and changing tacks a little here, but Mr Stevenson strongly argues that someone else should run, for example, education. Mr Stevenson may not have been in Canberra in the 1960s and 1970s when this community was most emphatic that we must have our own education system. Mr Cornwell well remembers that argument. They said, "We do not want to be part of New South Wales. We are not satisfied. We want to have our own hands on our education system and we want to run that education system". That is what the community said and that is what they got via the ACT Schools Authority, a statutory body that was very well established and was appropriate to a federal system. Now that we have self-government it is appropriate that it be managed in the way it now is. The community wants to know all about its education system.
We have had a long debate recently about policing. I acknowledge that the community is very interested in this subject. Do you think they want to pass it back, as it was years ago, to some obscure bureaucrat who could make any decision that he or she liked? The ACT community will not want to pass back policing. The ACT community wants to have a direct say in policing, in health, and in these most significant matters. In fact, contrary to what Mrs Carnell says, what the ACT people really want to talk about is health and education and justice.
Mrs Carnell: That is what I said.
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