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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2608 ..

these pressing issues at any time over the last two days, nor in the last sitting, nor, as far as I can recall from the statement of claim made by the Leader of the Opposition, at any time this year.

Matters in relation to psychiatric nurses, matters in relation to the location of the forensic mental health facility—a decision that actually hasn’t ultimately or absolutely been taken—or in relation to the level of expenditure on mental health facilities don’t, as far as I can recall, loom large in any question time in this Assembly this year. And yet these matters are that dramatic, are so pressing, are of such grave concern that the opposition marches in here this morning, without notice to the government or to the minister, and puts on the table a demand that before the close of business today the minister resign.

This needs to be seen for what it is: appalling, petty, pathetic politics by a leader of the opposition with no standing in the community, with an opposition that knows it’s in for a flogging in three months time and is desperate for any clawing back of any respect within the community. I know what your polling says. You know what your polling says. You are regarded by the Canberra community as a joke. The Leader of the Opposition’s preferred Chief Minister rating is 14 per cent. That is why the Leader of the Opposition has come in here today and moved this motion of no confidence in a very good minister. It’s because he knows from his polling that his preferred Chief Minister rating is 14 per cent. That is the state in which the Liberal Party in the ACT has been reduced to: a leader of the opposition with a 14 per cent preferred Chief Minister status; a group of colleagues who are regarded as a rabble, half of whom don’t have a positive approval rating in the polling, half of whom have a higher disapproval rating than approval rating in the eyes of the electorate.

Why wouldn’t you storm into this place three months out from an election and see whether or not you can’t actually provide something of a diversion or a distraction from your own sorry state? The fact is that as an opposition you have been an abject failure. You have not been able, as a result of your lack of capacity, your lack of diligence, to actually perform your essential role as an opposition. And it hasn’t been good for the Assembly, it hasn’t been good for governance and it hasn’t been good for the level of scrutiny that the people of Canberra have a right to deserve from their elected representatives.

We all know that that’s what this motion’s about. Look at the nature of it. It relates to what has happened over the last two years with the Minister for Health and Minister for Planning You’ve had the poor old Hansard staff trawling through every detail for the last two years looking for an inconsistency, and you found three inconsistencies. And they go basically to matters of dispute or disputation between you and us on issues of essential policy.

Where should the forensic mental health facility be? What are we doing about psychiatric nursing scholarships? What is the true level of expenditure on mental health in the ACT? We can argy-bargy about them; we can debate them or dispute them. They change; they’re not constants. Ministers grapple with a lorry-load of information constantly; it’s a feature of this place because you have ministers with multiple portfolios.

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