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You will not have your Gallery of Aboriginal Australia”. Those sorts of things, Mr Speaker, are an insult to the intelligence of this electorate, an electorate which voted decisively just a few short weeks ago to say to the former Government, “You have failed. Get out of office. We want in there someone who is going to make some change and make some difference”. This is what the former Government has failed to understand, and they are now trying to impose again on this Territory.

Mr Speaker, this motion says, in effect, “We do not trust you. We do not want anything to do with this process. Put it on hold. We want to drag our feet and make sure that this Government is not successful in getting this project under way”. Let me say at the outset that the Chief Minister has freely conceded that there will be a need to have further discussions with members of this Assembly - indeed, in particular, to talk about the implications of the report of the Planning and Environment Committee - before any decisions can be made about how the agreement between the Commonwealth and the Territory is to be implemented. In a sense, there are two parts of this motion. There is the part that deals with the letting of tenders and the signing of contracts, on which the Chief Minister has given undertakings, and there is the part dealing with negotiations and the spending of taxpayers’ money as part, presumably, of those negotiations about which I think that there should be a very different view by the Assembly.

I deal, first of all, with the second matter. Mr Speaker, as the Chief Minister has indicated, the Commonwealth made it very clear that the ACT would have to agree to the terms of this arrangement or expect not to receive additional funds from the Commonwealth as part of the round of the COAG and Premiers Conference negotiations last month. That was made crystal clear. Members might care to dispute whether the Commonwealth behaves in that fashion. Members on the cross benches might not be aware, not having been involved in those sorts of negotiations; but I can assure you that when the Commonwealth wants to play hardball it plays hardball. When the Commonwealth wants to exercise its power over the ACT, knowing that it has the capacity to make or unmake decisions at the ACT level by force of its paramount legislative authority in this area, it will make those decisions. The Commonwealth said to the ACT, “You take this offer or you get nothing”.

Ms Follett: We got $30m last year and kept the land.

MR HUMPHRIES: That $30m was in a very different environment, Ms Follett. That decision was taken in a very different environment.

Ms Follett: I played hardball too.

MR HUMPHRIES: You were not there. States this time round did not get increases in funding. The ACT and the Northern Territory were the only two jurisdictions that did get special allocations of this kind. The ACT was lucky to get that money. The circumstances of that deal were not particularly favourable to the ACT, but we have accepted it and are getting on with making the most of that opportunity.

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