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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Thursday, 26 August 2004) . . Page.. 4445 ..

give one party or another an advantage, please, just do it. If you are here to serve yourself, you should not be here. I believe that these negative reasons are the antithesis of what I believe elected representatives are here for, namely, to serve others, not themselves.

Looking back over my elected years, I naturally see my service pre and post-government and this background brings with it some disappointment—disappointment because some of us who fought for self-determination for the territory recognised that we had a unique opportunity to be a different type of self-governing area. We are, after all, a city-state and we were in 1989 the first territory for many years under the Westminster system to achieve this important status.

We had the opportunity to be different and we failed, but there is still the opportunity to do so. Instead, with hundreds of years of examples behind us of how existing legislatures could be improved upon, we slavishly followed the examples of our interstate counterparts; and worse, we did so without even thinking about trying to improve the existing systems in the headlong rush for perceived self-government power, I suppose. It was a perfectly natural mistake, but I think that it was a mistake.

Unfortunately, as I see it, the progressiveness of the Assembly is directed into social initiatives rather than the structure of the Assembly itself. As a result of this social progressiveness, I believe that we are creating a cotton wool city, protecting people from themselves by imposing more and more restrictions and taking away the right and obligation people have to be responsible for themselves.

We think that this is being progressive, just as we think that projecting the image that a caring community which recognises all sorts of minorities and is enforced by legislation will make wider society more accepting of such minorities, whereas in fact these efforts only benefit yet another minority, our self-deluded selves. Too often it is forgotten that majorities too have rights. These majorities, I believe, are sick of being told that their gut instincts about right and wrong, about values and responsibilities and about obligations and respect, for example, are politically incorrect, generational and unworthy of a place in this brave new world that we are creating.

I have to say that too often in this place I have seen an abdication by us as elected representatives of our duty to the rich as well as the poor and our duty to the majority as well as the minority, the distortion of straightforward Australian values for the elitist and social divisiveness of multiculturalism, and a failure to accept all Australians as just that, Australians, irrespective of colour, creed, sex or race. Instead, I see special concessions being granted to people whom I think are personally diminished by such patronising and charitable behaviour.

A former Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, said quite succinctly in 1992:

The task for all of us here is to serve the people of Canberra; to govern on their behalf, in their interests and according to their wishes.

I went on to say about that:

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