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Mr Connolly: We will wear the blame for a AAA credit rating when we left office.

MR STEFANIAK: You might have got a AAA credit rating, but you left your budget in a pretty awful state, Terry.

Ms McRae: You wish.

MR STEFANIAK: I wish you had not, Roberta, yes. It is not just a lot of froth and bubble, as Mr Berry said.

I was interested to hear Mr Moore's comments. Mr Moore made a number of quite valid and sensible comments. He highlighted a problem in education, in that we do have a lot of senior teachers, and that is something that is going to be with us for some time. He highlighted the problem that this Government, indeed any Territory government, will face, namely, the problem of money. There is limited money and there are a lot of things that need to be done. It is a matter of prioritising. It is a real problem for any government and it requires a commonsense approach. It requires reasonableness to be shown by people.

It seems that we may well have minority governments for some time in the Territory. We are yet to have a majority one and, even though we received a thumping good mandate, as opposed to the Labor Party, it still was not 50 per cent and we are still a minority government. So compromise, commonsense and reasonableness have to be shown by all of us in the Assembly if we are to achieve things for Canberra. I think the approach taken by the Chief Minister in relation to a council-style government and taking people with us, as exemplified by this ministerial statement on the Government's priorities for Canberra, demonstrates commonsense. It shows a willingness to make compromises where necessary and, more than anything else, it is a very reasonable document and a reasonable blueprint for this Territory to pursue.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister) (12.03), in reply: I thank the members for their responses today, and Ms Follett last week, to the ministerial statement on priorities for Canberra which I tabled in the Assembly. It is clear from today’s debate that the issues I raised in the statement have provoked a great deal of feeling amongst quite a number of members of this Assembly. From the outset may I say that I make absolutely no apology at all for my approach.

The issue of waiting lists was brought up previously. When there are problems in the system and those problems come to light I will continue to make them public. I will make them public in the media and in this Assembly. I think the only way that we can assess how well we are going as a government and as an Assembly is by adopting an approach which is open and decisive, and one that embraces reform. In other words, we have a problem, so let us do something about it. Mr Connolly, were you indicating in your speech that somehow the problems with category 1 waiting lists did not exist before March?

Mr Connolly: I said that they got worse in the last month.

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