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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001-2002 Week 1 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 36 ..
MRS DUNNE (continuing):
of elections decided by party machines awarding safe seats to favoured candidates and agreed instead to introduce the fairest electoral system in the world.
It was an inspiring example of what can be achieved by cooperation across political boundaries, and that is the only way that anything can be achieved in this Assembly. Some consider it a frustration; I esteem it as a safeguard in a system with few of the usual checks and balances of the Westminster system.
Another milestone was the ACT becoming part of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. I am particularly proud of the role I played in negotiations. I believe passionately that, as inhabitants of one of the most arid countries in the world, we must do our part to protect and enhance our most precious natural resource. As Australia's largest inland city and the largest city inside the basin, a great responsibility rests on us. We must be careful custodians of our water, but, more than that, we must be prepared to lead the way in innovative water policy.
Along the way, I have acquired a label or two. A former distinguished member, and a minister in this place, once referred to me as a "dangerous conservative". If my belief in institutions makes me conservative, then I am proud to wear the label. And if standing in the way of change for its own sake without thought of the consequences makes me dangerous, then I am determinedly dangerous.
Our last century is too tragically littered with the victims of social planning in societies as far apart as Germany, Russia and Cambodia. I share Edmund Burke's regard for the organic nature of society, and take careful heed of his words:
... it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.
Yet even Burke, speaking about pre-revolutionary France, made the wise observation that a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
I stand before you today as a proud representative of the Liberal Party of the ACT, but I would label myself as a Liberal of the Hayek school. I do not see liberalism as the middle way between radicalism and conservatism. I do not support the status quo simply because "we've always done it that way", but I will support the institutions and conventions that underpin our stability and cohesion and make us what we are.
As a child of the Cold War, however, and a student of history, I have the deepest suspicion of any ideology that purports to provide ready-made answers to all the political questions of the day. None of us has a monopoly on political or social wisdom. While I expect to disagree on many occasions with my fellow members, I hope that I shall always respect their views, the belief in those views that brought them to seek election, and the endorsement of the community that made those aspirations a reality.
Nor do I believe that all wisdom resides in this Assembly, despite the range of views represented. Politicians, especially in the ACT, are necessarily people who know a little about a wide range of topics, and I am humbled by the knowledge that anything I say in
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