Page 4450 - Week 14 - Thursday, 1 December 1994
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Recycling and Garbage Service - Brochure
MR HUMPHRIES: My question is to the Chief Minister. I refer to a booklet and a letter which have been delivered to households across the ACT - I am sure that she is very familiar with it - entitled "Your Guide to the New Recycling and Garbage Service". It could be subtitled "How My Party Learnt to Love the Big Bins". I note that this package contains personal messages and carefully airbrushed photographs of, not one, but two Ministers in the Government - Mr Lamont and, I think it is, Ms Follett on the letter that accompanies it. Can the Chief Minister advise whether any public money has been used to compile, publish or distribute this information package? If so, how much? Why does the Chief Minister feel it necessary to have a personalised letter from her, introducing Canberrans to their new garbage bins, which the Labor Party did not want?
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, I might again advise Mr Humphries that the Minister responsible for these matters is Mr Lamont. He is sitting here, right next to me, just to my right, and is available to answer questions at this question time or at any other question time. Mr Lamont advises me that the answer to Mr Humphries's question is that there was no public money whatsoever put to that purpose. The cost of the publication, postage, distribution and everything else was borne by the contractor.
MR HUMPHRIES: I have a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. I assume that these are the big bins that the Chief Minister was talking about in 1990, when she said:
No government acting in an environmentally responsible way could contemplate the introduction of big bins.
I ask the Chief Minister: Is it true that the companies mentioned on the back of the brochure, which are described as sponsors, paid for the printing and distribution of this material?
Mrs Grassby: She has just told you that.
MR HUMPHRIES: No; she said that she did not know who had done it. She said, "It was not the Government". If it is these people who have done it, does she feel that it is inappropriate for people who have won a contract with the ACT Government to supply a service to the ACT community to be funding literature which has emblazoned on it material which might give rise to a conflict of interest on their part?
MS FOLLETT: I will refer that question to the appropriate Minister.
MR LAMONT: Madam Speaker, I am extremely pleased to be able to answer Mr Humphries's question. His question was in two parts. The first part was whether that recycling bin is the one that Ms Follett referred to in 1990. The answer is: No, Mr Humphries, it is not. What she referred to in 1990 was what we all referred to in 1990 as your folly. What you were proposing bears absolutely no resemblance to the magnificent service that has been introduced by the Follett Labor Government.
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