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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (11 November) . . Page.. 3953 ..

MS TUCKER (5.08): While I agree that the Liberal Party, in government, has had some poor priorities - and I have argued extensively about this over the last three years - the question I have to ask myself when I look at this matter of public importance is: How would the Australian Labor Party have been different? The reason I got into politics was that neither major party, I believed, had the right priorities. We basically saw, with the Howard Federal Government - while particularly repugnant - that the way was made easy for them by the former Hawke and Keating quasi-Liberal governments. Basically, they made the people and the environment subservient to the economy. They implemented the Hilmer report and the market reforms, deregulated the financial markets in Australia and sold off our forests for a pittance to foreign paper companies.

In the local area, the public transport, or lack of it, in the ACT might have got worse under the Liberal Government; but public transport had been degenerating under the former Labor Government also. In respect of the reduction in quality of community health centres, in my view, both Labor and Liberal have not done sufficient in that area in terms of primary and preventive health care. All we ever seem to hear about is the waiting lists. We have seen cuts to funding for community centres. These cuts started under the previous Labor Government. We have seen poor planning decisions. We have turned the ACT into a big shopping mall, supporting ridiculous developments in a policy vacuum. Labor and Liberal voted together to weaken the planning laws in the ACT, reducing opportunities for the community to appeal on planning decisions. In disability services, the lack of after-school care and school holiday programs for children under 12 with a disability has been highlighted in reports since early 1990. The lack of a social plan for the ACT is also a result of Labor's work, as well as the Liberal Government's work.

So, I do not believe that the priorities of either major party are appropriate. That is why we are here. Hopefully, the Greens have been able to influence the priorities to some degree. Mrs Carnell's Government has been open to some of our input. So, I do not really want to support this matter of public importance, which seems to be just about throwing a few insults around, once again without any real, positive contribution from the Labor Party. I am increasingly frustrated at how little we get from the Labor Party in terms of positive solutions. It is all very well to continually bag what the Liberal Government is doing; but we need to see from Labor how they will do it differently. It is critical information, not just for the community but for members of the crossbenches, because we have to make very hard decisions in this place, as the community does, and we need to have those decisions informed by real policies. We need to get a real idea of what a Labor government would actually do to address the issues that we are all facing in this town.

MR WHITECROSS (5.12): I was just waiting for some further embellishment from the Greens. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, in response to Ms Tucker, I should say, just briefly, that, when Ms Tucker needs to make a decision about whether she is going to have a Labor government or a Liberal government, she will be well informed about what that choice means. When the Labor Party is deciding how to vote on issues, it bases its decisions on its views of the policies that are appropriate for the people of Canberra. On many occasions, they do not happen to be the same as the policies of the Liberals. But that is how the Labor Party approaches things and that is how it will continue to approach things.

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