Page 4183 - Week 13 - Thursday, 25 November 1993
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MR HUMPHRIES (4.18): Madam Speaker, it certainly is amusing to see the Government bleating and wriggling to try to avoid the effect of this amendment, but they know full well that what they see in front of them here is their own promises to the ACT community coming home to roost. They know that they were the ones who paraded themselves at the last election as the friends of teachers and teacher numbers, and this amendment is all about that. It is about making this Government live up to its promises. To quote another person in another place, it is about keeping the bastards honest.
Madam Speaker, it is perfectly true that the Government does not directly spend money in non-government education - indeed, it does not - which is why a prohibition on the Executive using money appropriated for the purpose of reducing the number of persons employed as teachers in schools or colleges does not affect non-government education. The Government does not employ people in non-government education. It gives grants to the non-government education sector, which it employs - - -
Mr Connolly: If they use those grants to pursue redundancies in the non-government sector the money has been appropriated for the purpose of reducing the number of teachers.
MR HUMPHRIES: No, no; the Executive does not use the money for that purpose, Madam Speaker. Members can argue and weasel their way all around this, and they can pretend that they have all sorts of comfort in the vagueness of the language. Might I say, Madam Speaker, that for a Government that today has introduced legislation which is exceptionally vague, and I am referring to the Limitation (Amendment) Bill and the Taxation (Administration) (Amendment) Bill (No. 2), it is a bit rich to hear them accuse anybody else of using language which is broad based.
Madam Speaker, I think I heard Ms Follett say something about arrogance. That makes me wonder about the extent to which people like Ms Follett look at themselves in the mirror. Think of the rich vein of arrogance which is present in this Government which can say to the people of the ACT, "Yes, we promised at the last ACT election to reduce class sizes, and now we are going to increase them. How dare you Opposition members try to make us, the Government which promised this, stick to our promises? How disgraceful! We are the Government. We can throw out whatever promises we want, because we have just discovered how bad the problems facing the Territory are".
Well, I am sorry, Madam Speaker; some of us knew about that some time ago and some of us were able to frame promises to this community which were not based on those outright lies, but this Government could not. Now, Madam Speaker, the chicken has come home to roost. It is time for this Government to acknowledge that it has built this nest itself, and it now has to lie in it. Yes, it is true that this sort of amendment is unprecedented in this place and in many other places, but so was the Government's dumping of an election promise central to the importance of public education. That is the reason, Madam Speaker, why this Government should wear this amendment today.
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