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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (11 November) . . Page.. 3954 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I am rising in support of this matter of public importance because I share the concern about the misguided approach that this Government has taken to governing the Territory over the last three years. Ms Tucker clearly does not think that the Liberal Government has done anything wrong, and Ms Tucker does not think that there are any concerns to express about the Liberal Government. The fact is that I am very concerned about the misguided way that the Government has been governing the Territory over the last three years.

Let us look at just a few things. Mr Berry has put together a bit of a shopping list of silly and disastrous things that the Government has done. I want to highlight just a few of them. First of all, you have the policy stuff-ups. They have spent plenty of money on policy stuff-ups. Let us begin at the beginning. Who can forget the strategic plan? It cost us $100,000 to do a strategic plan for the running of this Territory, prepared without any consultation with the members of this Assembly and without having the Commonwealth signed on. We are trying to run the national capital, where the Commonwealth is the significant player; but do we have the Commonwealth signed on? No. Do we have members of this Assembly signed on, even though we have a minority government and Mrs Carnell is always going on about council-style government? No.

We spent $100,000 on that, and within days this place had said to the Government, "That was a waste of time. Now go back and do it properly". So, then we waited, and we waited, and then we waited some more. At the end of all that waiting, what happened? They said, "Let us have a get-together called the National Capital Futures Conference, where we can make it a lot of other people's problems and we can talk for a little while" - - -

Mrs Littlewood: On a point of order, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker: Mr Whitecross is overacting again.

MR WHITECROSS: They said, "And, hopefully, someone else will come up with a solution for us, because we do not have a strategic plan". That is a policy stuff-up, if ever I saw one.

For three years, Mrs Carnell has been giving out money under the business incentive scheme and its predecessors. Mr Humphries, about a week ago - at five minutes to midnight - said, "We have come up with this good idea. We are going to have an industry plan. We have been giving away the money for three years; but now we have decided that we will have an industry plan to decide how we are going to do it". What a good idea! Another policy stuff-up! They suddenly realise that they have been handing out the money on an ad hoc basis, with no structure; so they want to rush around at the last minute and have an industry plan.

Then, of course, there are the supermarkets. Who can forget the supermarkets? The Government went out there and made a completely ad hoc decision, with no rational basis that anybody has been able to discern. Not even the Greens, who supported it, agreed that it was rational, because the Greens wanted to do group centres as well, which at least had some consistency about it. But, no, the Government had no rational basis for it. They dug themselves into a hole, and then they sat there in their hole until

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