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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4051 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I refer you to the Government's response on page 17 and if you can tell me what it means I would be very grateful. They have not numbered their paragraphs, but they are commenting on the committee's paragraph 3.28, "Rescue Helicopter", and it reads:

The NSW Government's review of the medical retrieval/rescue helicopter services in that State and decentralised the services based in Sydney.

Well, that is informative! The next sentence is:

The review included negotiations with the CAT -

the what? -

on the possible sitting of the south-east region service being located in the Canberra area.

What is the CAT and why is it sitting in the south-east region? It is nonsense, and that is not the only example. It is contemptible. It is a standard of work that I had hoped never to see coming out of the ACT government service or the ACT Government. You ought to know better.

Mr Speaker, there is also another section of the Government's response. It is the response to recommendation 19. Mrs Carnell has made much of the fact that the Government has agreed with all but one, I think she said, of the recommendations of the committee, but in respect of recommendation 19 it has not let us into the secret of whether it is agreeing or not. I gather that it is vaguely supportive of what the committee said, but not so far as to commit itself to any particular course of action. Again, Mr Speaker, the missing words, the poor punctuation or the lack of punctuation make it almost incomprehensible. This is from the Department of Education. They start off one paragraph by saying "To achieve this", but I do not know what the "this" is. They say:

To achieve this the Government intends to review the existing system to ensure maximum flexibility in meeting parents -

that will be nice for you all, will it not? -

and to give particular regard to ...

Then there is a list of things. Why do you want to meet with parents? It is nonsense. It is typical. It is unfortunate, Mr Speaker, that so many of these examples are quite humorous, because the underlying problem is very serious indeed. As I say, it is yet another demonstration of the contempt in which this Government holds this Assembly and

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