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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3447 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

With what you have to call a mandate of sorts, to go out there and do things, what has the government actually achieved? Where is it going, in reshaping and redesigning the vision of the territory?

In a sense, the territory is a piece of clay-it is there to be shaped by the government of the day. However, that opportunity does not always arise. All sorts of situations can circumscribe the capacity of a government to make decisions. I have certainly been a member of governments that have had restrictions placed on their freedom to act.

This government faces less restrictions than any government I can think of in the past. The opportunities are greater for it than for any other government, but it has not seized them. It is a government which has operated on the basis of outward years.

Let me quote from the list of first-year achievements of the Labor government in office, from the attachment to the Chief Minister's press release of today. I will quote just some of the words from this document. It says, under "General"that they have initiated a review of the size of the Assembly; they are instigating a new blah blah project; drafted a blah blah strategy; re-established the joint council blah blah blah; established the office of blah; established offices and councils of blah; established a select committee into blah; established a council-blah, blah, blah; established a working group; established a reference group; undertaken a review; launched a consultation mechanism; established an advisory panel; held a summit; commissioned a review; established a consultative committee; established a review and launched a project. Those are just the achievements of the first minister in the government.

Half of this constitutes thoughts about what the future might hold-pondering, thinking, "What shall we do next?"Yet that is not matched with a program of action. Where are the actions of this government? Where are the opportunities that that you have grasped and are taking advantage of?

Mr Speaker, there was an article on 20 October-the anniversary of the election-which must have frightened many small children as they opened their paper and saw this picture of the Chief Minister's teeth staring out at them.

Mr Stanhope: I agree with you on that! We agree on something.

MR HUMPHRIES: Thank you. In the article, the spokesman for Mr Stanhope said that the claims the opposition made of broken election promises were total nonsense, and that the government should be judged over its record over its full term. Mr Stanhope was quoted as saying, "I don't think we've failed in any area."

My problem with that is that the government here has not just made promises, it has made specific promises. It costed its promises in its election statements just before the election last year in such a way that it indicated the timing of each of the things it was going to do-in which financial year these things would be delivered.

So we have here a series of promises. Mr Stanhope says this is a nonsense, but I defy him to identify a single promise in here which we can honestly and truthfully say has, in fact, not been broken.

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