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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 2215 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Community Development Fund by an amount equivalent to the interest that would have been paid if the Community Development Fund had continued to operate. That is rather similar to the suggested changes that are before the Assembly today. It is bizarre for the Leader of the Opposition to suggest that this is the first time that this has happened and that therefore she is entitled to move a motion of this kind on the floor of the Assembly. She did not do her homework very well, I would suggest, in that respect.

Mr Speaker, returning to the subject matter of the Estimates Committee report generally, I have to say that I disagree with the thrust of some of the recommendations made in the report. That comment has been made by other members. For example, the suggestion that the Government is not adequately preparing for the change in the environment in which people will dispose of rubbish at waste dumps in the ACT is a false suggestion. The committee appears to have totally overlooked a very significant allocation of some $188,000 in the budget to monitor illegal dumping. It has completely ignored that fact. It has suggested that we should put money aside when in fact we have done so to a very significant degree.

That issue aside, as Minister for the Environment I have to express grave concern about the willingness of the committee to overlook important salutory effects of those sorts of decisions. I am not sure that my colleagues in the Labor Party would be particularly prepared to do that, but I certainly expected the Greens to come forward and acknowledge the considerable courage the Government showed in deciding to impose tip fees in the ACT. The decision has met with some adverse reaction from members of the community. The decision was taken to protect the ACT's environment. Tip fees cause people to say, "Do I really need to take this to the tip or can I recycle it?". That is a very important step. If members opposite are prepared to excoriate the Government on the areas where they do not feel the Government is up to scratch - and they have done that in the Estimates Committee report - it is also incumbent on them to recognise areas where the Government have made courageous decisions and deserve to be congratulated or commended on their course of action. That is not the case in this year's Estimates Committee report.

I also have to express complete disgust - no better word comes to mind - with the protestations of members of the Estimates Committee about the so-called cuts to unemployment programs. Mr Speaker, it is hypocrisy of the most sheer and breathtaking kind to run to the community saying how desperately angry and upset members are that they see the Government not continuing to fund unemployment programs, when they themselves, in their own forward estimates in the 1994-95 budget, projected no money at all of the kind they are now calling for in those programs. It is a wonder that members' toes are not curling from the sheer arrogance of those statements.

Ms McRae: You are in government. That is the problem.

MR HUMPHRIES: The old accusation comes across, "You are in government. Because you have done what we were going to do, you have to wear it and we can criticise you, even though it is exactly what we ourselves were going to do". Is there no honour among thieves? Apparently not.

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