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A lot of the time we will be making decisions that will not please everybody in the community; there is no doubt about that. A lot of the time we will not be agreeing with one another across the floor of the house; there is no doubt about that either, because that is the way human nature is. But as long as we can do it without conflict, as much as we can, as long as we can do it together, I am sure that we are going to get the right decision in the end. So, you will see, Mr Speaker, a lot of difference between the way the former Government operated and the way this Government will operate.

It would be remiss of me if I did not have something to say on Mr Connolly's remarks about corporatisation. Mr Connolly knows that when the Labor Party took office, following the Alliance Government, he and other members of the Labor Party were directed not by straw men but by real people behind them - the ideological loonies - who said to them, “You shall not corporatise anything else. Totalcare is all you will get, no more”. It was not the members of this Assembly who decided what the Government should do or should not do; it was people outside this elected body. This will not happen under a Liberal administration because on corporatisation, for example, we are following suit after such luminaries of the Right as Bob Carr, Paul Keating, Wayne Goss and others. We are doing it because, once again, it makes a lot of sense. Mrs Carnell's speech outlined what a commonsense approach this Government is going to take. It did that because this Government is going to be a fair, reasonable and responsible government.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

MR BERRY (11.45): One has to correct the historical perspective when speaking on these issues, as history has played such a major part in the debate. I was very interested to hear Mr Kaine trumpeting the successes of the Alliance Government. Mr Humphries is not here now, but he was an important part of the Alliance Government. Well, he was a part of the Alliance Government; I am not sure that he was important. We remember what occurred in those days. We remember Mr Humphries getting stuck into the schools and closing the schools down. That was an ideological bent, if ever I saw one. We remember Mr Humphries in his attacks on the hospital system, closing down the hospital. Mr Humphries was the Health Minister. He was in charge and made the decision to close down the hospital system. Mrs Carnell, who was appointed to the hospital board, helped him close down the hospital system. As a follow-on to the Alliance Government, we have the complaints of the Liberals opposite about the health system, which they had, in effect, undermined with their tragic actions. They were issues that had to be dealt with, and I think we are still paying the price for some of the actions of the Liberals in that Alliance Government. In fact, I am certain that we are. The education system was dealt a traumatic blow in the period of the Alliance Government, and I think they are only just recovering from that.

When it comes to the ideology of this so-called open and consultative Government, we have only to look at recent history to see how untrue their election claims and their public claims are. A moment ago we heard members opposite claiming that they are open and consultative, that they will listen to people and take notice. The most important decision that has been made in recent times has been the negotiations with the Federal Government about financial assistance for the Territory - in my view, botched. We have seen the negotiations with the Federal Government about a land swap botched, in my view.

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