Page 1384 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 12 May 1993
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MR DE DOMENICO (4.45): Madam Speaker, I suggest that we get back to the notice on the daily program, which states:
Proposed Canberra City Council - Mr Stevenson to move the motion appearing on the Notice Paper in his name.
I think it is likely that the only person who is going to vote for that motion is Mr Stevenson.
Ms Follett: And Mrs Carnell. She has to vote for it.
MR DE DOMENICO: With respect, Chief Minister, every speaker that has preceded me has said that they are supportive of self-government, including Mrs Carnell. So what are we here for? I can understand that members opposite will try to play politics with whatever issue is before them, and that is fine. Perhaps that is what some of us are here to do. In reality - and reality is something Mr Stevenson and some of the people who support him find difficult to believe - what we are saying is this: The ACT will continue to be self-governing, notwithstanding the format self-government takes from time to time, depending on the wishes of the community. Self-government is here to stay because no Federal government of any political persuasion in their right mind would take back the responsibility which now is ours and should be ours.
Ms Ellis: And we would not want them to.
MR DE DOMENICO: We would not want them to, as Ms Ellis says; to that I say, "Hear, hear". I have heard a lot about the supposed rift between Mr Kaine and Mrs Carnell. From time to time you will find, on all sorts of issues, that there will be differences of opinion between members of the Liberal Party, whether they be members of the Parliamentary Liberal Party or ordinary members of the Liberal Party. What a fine thing that is. Would it not be boring and would it not be terrible if we were all like the members opposite - whatever faction has the numbers, they have to do what they tell them because if they do not they are gone. What a poor situation Canberra would be in if every party operated the same way. Yes, sometimes, from time to time, I will disagree with Mrs Carnell on certain issues. I have the right as a member of the Liberal Party to say that. She will disagree with me. We will both disagree with Mr Kaine. He will disagree with me and others. That is fantastic and that is the way the Liberal Party works. The Liberal Party works on choice. Mr Berry used the two words "choice" and "flexibility" this morning, and he mentioned freedom of the individual.
There were times when Mr Kaine put forward ideas for a different form of self-government. When I was president of the Chamber of Commerce and had not been elected to this place I heard Mr Kaine talk about a collegiate system of government. I was one of those people who happened to agree with Mr Kaine when he said that. As Mr Kaine said, that was not the view of the then Legislative Assembly; so it did not happen. Big deal! Mr Kaine still has not resiled from those views, on what he said today; nor should he. That is the basis of what I am here to say. We are here to debate this motion of Mr Stevenson's on a proposed Canberra city council. I think it was Mr Lamont who said that Mr Stevenson seems to have changed his point of view. Mr Humphries said it as well. Apparently Mr Stevenson is no longer here to say that he wants to abolish self-government. He is now saying, "Well, some sort of self-government is not too bad now".
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