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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2544 ..

there that makes the man supposedly the leader of this territory afraid of setting a target. Chief Minister, why are you afraid to achieve something? Why are you afraid to commit to something? Apparently your federal party wants the federal government to commit to the Kyoto protocol and a reduction in greenhouse targets, but you cannot do it in the ACT. Jon Stanhope does not want to go there because he does not have the courage to try to reach these targets. We have had a speech with all the reasons for not doing anything. It can be summed up, basically, by saying, “I am afraid of the targets. I am afraid of failure. I am afraid of doing anything.”

This Chief Minister will go down in history, having lost office at the end of his first term in government, as the Chief Minister of reviews. What is he proposing in relation to a commitment to greenhouse targets? He is proposing another review. When we had as a political party to go out and say in 1997, as the first jurisdiction in Australia, that we would set ourselves ambitious targets, we knew that it would not be easy to achieve them. We knew that it would take some effort.

Mr Stanhope: Did you know that it was impossible?

MR SMYTH: Oh, it is impossible! Everything is impossible! Mr Stanhope says that it is impossible. It is only impossible, Jon, if you let it be impossible. When we said that there should be no waste by 2010, they laughed at us. We were able to set targets and we went after them, such that the no waste by 2010 strategy, which had its genesis in Liberal Party policy in this Assembly in the last decade, is now being followed across the world. There are no waste networks across the world—everywhere from America to the Welsh no waste network. Wales can do it, but the ACT cannot. To your shame, Chief Minister, you will go down in history as the bland Chief Minister who would not set a target or would not set a time line.

Let’s look at the reviews we have had and the plans that we have. The white paper has no target and no time line. The spacial plan has no target and no time line. The mental health plan has no target and no time line. The children’s health plan has no target and no time line. The health action plan has no target and no time line. The social plan has no target and no time line.

The draft west Civic plan had a target. We were going to achieve something in 30 years. That is something to stir the soul, something on which to say to the troops, “Come on, gird your loins, get your backpacks out, pick up your shovels.” But in the final analysis, Jon Stanhope’s government could not commit to a 30-year time line for reviving west Civic. He is a man without time lines, a man without targets.

Not only is he content with not putting up serious targets or time limits, but also in some of his plans he has put up nebulous things. As with the promise that no child shall live in poverty by 1990, he says that he will do something by 2013 or he will do something by 2033. There are no serious time lines and no serious targets in anything that this government has issued. Not only is he content with having a lackadaisical and lazy style of leadership that does not challenge him to do anything or achieve anything, but also he is now so afraid of the targets set by a government in 1997 that he is going to gut those plans as well.

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