Page 1373 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 12 May 1993
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in this small parliament and you look at debates in other parliaments in Australia, and essentially they are about the same issues. They are about how we divide the cake, how we allocate funds to human services like health and education, how we provide security in the community, and how we pay for it - not how we get the Commonwealth or some bountiful fairy godmother to pay for it.
That is the approach that responsible political leaders have been taking up to date, and it is not an approach which necessarily guarantees popularity. I am sure that many of us would have known that at public meetings in past election campaigns and during past periods of debate we could have tapped a wellspring of populism by bagging the self-government idea and pushing this nonsense about a city council. Everybody seems to think that a city council would solve all our problems. But responsible political leaders have avoided doing that.
Mrs Carnell, it is very unfortunate that your first utterance as Leader of the Opposition that has caused any particular controversy or notice has been such a silly one, such a populist one, such an attempt to delve back into that anti-self-government feeling. It worked; I grant you that it worked. You wanted to go for a populist approach, and it worked. You got the calls coming in. They were ringing up Matthew Abraham and saying, "Yes, we do not like self-government. That is a great idea. Mrs Carnell is on the right track". But it is irresponsible and short-sighted and a significant abdication of the responsibility I would have thought your party vested in you when they elected you leader.
It required Mr Kaine to get up in this place last night and on Matthew Abraham's program this morning to make it abundantly clear that it is not the Liberal Party policy to move to this silly concept of local government, that the Liberal Party acknowledges that we have to pay for our affairs ourselves, and that we as elected representatives of the people of Canberra in this Assembly have to make the decisions about the future of Canberra. You served your party and yourself poorly, Mrs Carnell, by that cheap run at populism, and you have been caught out by it. The fact that the editorial in this morning's newspaper, on your second day as Opposition Leader, had to take you to task for such silly and irresponsible statements does not bode well for your period as Liberal leader, but it is reassuring to see that the party at least has had second thoughts and is retreating from this foolish position and will be voting with the Government to oppose Mr Stevenson's motion.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.06): Madam Speaker, I do not know what it is exactly that Mrs Carnell has done here, but I can say one thing: She has certainly scared the living daylights out of those opposite. I have never seen a group of people more terrified of taking part in a debate than these people opposite, even to the extent of supporting Dennis Stevenson to bring the debate on today so that they could nip it in the bud. This is the extent of their terror. It really is quite extraordinary. What is going on here? They are afraid to embark on this debate because they do not believe that they can control the outcome. Unlike, say, the republican debate, those opposite believe that the end result might be disadvantageous to their own interests - perhaps they are even thinking of their own personal interests - and certainly would fly against the particular position the party has adopted in the past.
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