Page 1383 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 12 May 1993
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MRS GRASSBY (4.41): Madam Speaker, I could not agree more with Ms Ellis's comment about opening up the debate being an absolute waste of time. When I first came to Canberra the thing I found very difficult was that we were tagged onto a Minister for Territories who cared very little about Canberra, other than when the public servants had to go up the hill and ask for more money because they had not balanced the budget. That irked many members on the hill, who felt that they could not get enough money for their electorates. Being the wife of a member with a large country electorate, I know that members felt that they were denied much and that Canberra was given the lot. I could understand why the Federal Government was very happy to hand over self-government to Canberra.
I think the people of Canberra have learnt that it is important that we have a say in how we run Canberra and how we spend our money. There is a very good saying, "No taxation without representation", and that is what self-government gave us. It gave us representation. It gave us the power to make decisions on where we spend our money. Do we spend it on education? Do we spend it on health? Do we spend it on roads? Do we spend it on other fancy things? We voted people into this house to make that decision.
In the very first Assembly we did have some people who came here with some rather ridiculous ideas and, unfortunately, we are left with one. I am quite sure that at the next election he will disappear too. The people of Canberra are starting to see that they have a government and an opposition that care about what happens in Canberra, that want to see Canberra a better place, that want to keep Canberra the way the people want it. I think that is what everybody here wants, other than one person.
As Ms Ellis said, opening the wounds of this debate was a very silly thing to do. It has given an opportunity to those people out there who live in what I call la-la-land and have a dream that we can have everything we want and everybody else in Australia will pay for it. We know that that is not so. Mr Kaine knows that that is not so. He has been in politics a long time, and he knows it. Ms Follett was also with Mr Kaine in the First Assembly. They know that you just cannot have everything you want, but at least when you have a government here you have a say. That does not happen when you are tacked onto the Minister for Territories, who does not live here and does not care very much, with public servants making decisions for us, planners making decisions we do not like, and other people deciding what we have to do. We vote people in here, and if we do not like them we get rid of them. We have a say in what we have.
I think it is very silly to open up a debate on whether we are going to have self-government, whether we are going to have a council, whether we are going to have this or that or something else. It is important that the people out there know that we do have a stable government and a stable opposition, and that in the next Assembly that is what it will all be about and we will not have crazy people sitting here who want to abolish it.
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