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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2484 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

and they do it. That is also the case for many of the public servants who live in Canberra - not perhaps all of them - and it is definitely the case for many who work in the private sector. Their job tells them that they need to shift, and they just shift with their family.

But not Mr Howard. His job dictates that he should be in Canberra, but he is happy to cause the public expense and the trouble involved in not doing so. He enlisted. He decided that he was going to be a member of parliament. He aimed to be Prime Minister. He was very dogged and determined to do that, and he succeeded. Having done so, he should have made the decision that many others in this city and in other places make, namely, that that is where his job takes him and his family.

Mr Speaker, this is the nation's capital. It was established after much argument and it has been written into the Constitution. It is the centre of administration for the Commonwealth; yet the head of that administration, the Prime Minister, opts not to live in the capital. As we approach the Centenary of Federation, it is a very poor message to give to Canberra and to Australia, and it is a very poor commemoration of what the Federation spirit is all about. I look for a reversal of that policy from this Prime Minister; but, if not from this Prime Minister, from the next, who may well be from Perth. I would look for that to occur very rapidly.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister) (10.49): Mr Speaker, as we approach the Centenary of Federation in Australia, it is important to remember that the ACT and the city of Canberra are the embodiment of Federation. The ACT was created in order to settle the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne - a rivalry that threatened the creation of an Australian nation. I am sure that all of us who have read the history of that time will acknowledge that. Integral to the creation of a national capital was the relocation of national institutions to Canberra - the Federal Parliament, the Commonwealth bureaucracy and the official residence of the Prime Minister of Australia, the Lodge.

Mr Speaker, the Lodge was good enough for Sir Robert Menzies, for Gough Whitlam, for Malcolm Fraser, for Bob Hawke and even for Paul Keating. But today we have the most unfortunate situation where the Prime Minister of this country has refused to make the national capital his primary residence. It is quite simply unacceptable and is in marked contrast to the position taken by Australia's greatest Prime Minister of all, Sir Robert Menzies, who did an enormous amount to establish Canberra as the national capital. Mr Speaker, I think that much of what Canberra is today is due to the decision by Sir Robert Menzies to change what was very much a country town that happened to be the capital into a national capital that everybody could be enormously proud of.

Mr Berry: It was the only good thing he ever did.

MRS CARNELL: He did a few more things than that, I have to say.

Initially, when Mr Howard announced that for family reasons he would make Sydney his primary residence, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Politics takes a heavy toll on family life, and Mr Howard's effort to retain some normality in his family, I think, was commendable. However, the fact that he ended up spending almost as much time in Canberra as in Sydney, yet made such a public issue of his decision to choose

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