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MR DE DOMENICO: We will talk about the Kingston issue at length if you like. What Mr Wood is standing up and telling this house is that he cannot trust Paul Keating. He does not trust Michael Lee and he does not trust the Chief Minister. I would like to know whom the Labor Party trusts. Certainly, the community did not trust them. We all know what the community did on 18 February - it gave them a complete and utter shellacking. That is what it did. The community did it at the Federal election as well. Mr Wood, what you have to realise now is that you should not knock, knock, knock all the time. If there is something about which you can say, “Well done” to someone else who does something, say so. Mr Wood's speech was made up of knocking the Kingston foreshore and telling us why he did not take any action. To be honest, Mr Wood, we are not interested in why you did not take any action. You did not for 4½ years, and, thank God, you are not going to get a chance to take any action in the future.
Mr Wood talked about retail space and said that the Liberals said that we do not need more retail space. The Liberals did not say anything of the sort. What the Liberal Party said was that we need to test whether there is a requirement for retail space. We need also to find out where it is required, what size is required and when it is required. We went out to the community and asked, “What is your view?”. Mr Wood, in 4½ years, called for a report; but he did not release it, probably because he did not like what it said to him. Once again Mr Wood stood in this place today and told us why he did not make any decisions in 4½ years. Mr Moore and others have noted from time to time that Mr Wood is renowned for not making decisions.
Not once did I hear Mr Wood talk about small business or unemployment. He concentrated on knocking the fact that we had made a decision, a visionary decision, and he talked about how nothing is going to happen for a long time. Of course nothing is going to happen for a long time; but this Government, and Mrs Carnell in particular, had the foresight to at least make a decision, a decision that Mr Keating put his name to and a decision that Mr Lee put his name to. Once again we did not get any plausible alternatives from the people opposite; it was just knock, knock, knock, and an individual attack on Mrs Carnell. There was nothing positive.
Mr Speaker, this Government, in the seven or eight weeks that it has been in power, has given the right message to the business community, and that message is that we will make decisions. We will take the community with us when we do make those decisions. We will definitely take the rest of the members of this Assemblywith us if those decisions are commonsense decisions. We will not knock individuals. We will go ahead and do the job that the electorate has elected us to do, in consultation with whoever wants to consult with us, and we will continue to consult. I can say one thing to the members opposite: Please take heed of what the community said on 18 February. Get out there in the real world and ask the people what they want you to do. What they do not want you to do is to come in here and knock, knock, knock for the sake of knocking. We want positive contributions. We would be delighted to accept positive contributions.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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