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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (23 November) . . Page.. 2459 ..

Mr Kaine: They got rid of David Lamont.

MR DE DOMENICO: They got rid of David Lamont. Slap bang, thank you, ma'am, let us go in and ban the lot. Do not think; let us do it. What is this Government doing? We consult. We got all the interested parties together around the table and held proper community consultation. You will find, very shortly, that we will come out with an outcome that everybody agrees with. What a positive thing! Of course, it is a positive thing. Do we hear anything from the Opposition about that? Of course we do not. It took us eight months to do it, sure. In one fell swoop Mr Lamont lost the election for them. So there is one positive thing.

Nothing is said about the closure of the Phillip Vehicle Testing Station and the introduction of random vehicle inspections. Is that something that the Liberal Party invented? Of course not. Who was talking about that as far back as two years ago? I can recall Terry Connolly, when he was Minister for Urban Services, talking about that. Did they do anything about it, though? The answer is no. They were gutless. They were hamstrung because, once again, certain elements of the trade union movement said, "You cannot do that". But it has been done. Why? Because it is the commonsense thing to do.

What other commonsense things did we do? We have combined City Operations with City Parks. Mr Whitecross talked about ideology. Is that ideological? Is it not fair that, if you are walking along the path and you see a piece of paper on the grass or on the concrete, you pick it up anyway? What used to happen before the amalgamation, Mr Speaker, was that one union was responsible for the concrete stuff and another union was responsible for the grass, and never the twain shall meet. Is that commonsense? Of course it is not.

The other interesting thing about City Parks and the amalgamation is that for years and years there was a big stoush between the AWU and the CFMEU. Certain pieces of equipment were not able to be driven in this town for two or three years. Guess what happened last week? All those machines are now being driven and being utilised. Under a Labor government? Of course not. Not under this ideologically bent Mr Whitecross. That is something that a Labor government could not do. Under this Government, through the Department of Urban Services, it is being done right now. Is not that positive? Of course it is. Do those opposite talk about positive things? Of course they do not. They are over there to oppose, to whinge and moan, and never will anything positive be uttered from their lips.

What else have we done? Let us have a look at the extension of the popular precinct management system. Are all these people running away from that? They are embracing it with open arms. They are saying, "Thank you; what a wonderful, commonsense idea". Who started that off? I have to say that it was started off by David Lamont at O'Connor. He is no longer here, because of all sorts of reasons; but we continued with that. Is that a right-wing ideological thing to do? Of course it is not. It was the commonsense thing to do. You will find that Urban Services, once again, is contracting out about 80 per cent of the services provided. Why is that? Because we are getting better value for money, for the taxpayer and ratepayer dollar, than we were before. Is not that commonsense government again? Of course it is. Is it ideological? Of course it is not.

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