Page 962 - Week 04 - Thursday, 3 May 2007
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in Australia. It is an issue that affects us nationally. It is a bit like Mr Mulcahy today essentially suggesting that I am responsible for the drought. I should have foreseen, Mr Mulcahy says, that inflows into our dams would reduce to four gigalitres, or 10 per cent of long-term average inflows. I should have foreseen the drought. I should have known that our dams would empty. It is Jon Stanhope’s fault that it is not raining.
Now we are told that it is this government’s fault that there is a national shortage of affordable housing. A lack of affordable housing is one of the big social issues affecting every government and every city in Australia—but it is all the ACT government’s fault; it has nothing to do with initiatives being pursued by the federal government, nothing to do with the first home owners grant. This is the nonsense.
Good government and governance are not just about infrastructure, whether we should be building a busway or not building a prison. If I wanted to give examples of good and bad governance and the failure of governance, I would go to significant issues of policy and service delivery such as mental health. I would go to this party’s record in government.
The opposition say that there are governance issues affecting this government. Let us look at their record on the most significant issues facing this community: the delivery of health services, mental health and disability. You cannot ever walk away from the fact that in 2001 you left this community with the lowest level of funding for mental health of any town or city in Australia. That is what you did. The facts are there. They are in black and white and they cannot be disputed.
This is your test of governance. When you had responsibility for health, how did you deal with those with a mental illness? You dealt with them by ignoring them. You dealt with them by starving them of funds. You dealt with them essentially by completely ignoring their needs and creating a situation in which Canberrans treated people in this community with a mental illness worse than any other community in Australia. No other town or city in Australia was left as bereft of funds and support in the mental health area as you left Canberra.
Then let us go to the other significant issue around good governance and a government’s commitment to its community and to good governance, and that is disability services. Another issue that we inherited on coming to government was the Gallop commission of inquiry into disability services. That was about government and governance. That was about the level of good governance in the delivery of disability services. Justice Gallop produced a detailed, rigorous, objective assessment of the Liberal Party’s governance of disability services and their delivery in the ACT.
Let me turn to that report now. It is all about the performance of Mr Stefaniak and Mr Smyth and those of their colleagues that were part of that government. It is a damning report, as we all know. It is an indictment of Bill Stefaniak and Mr Smyth. It was a report that was prompted by a range of serious incidents in disability services, including a number of deaths of the most vulnerable members of this community, and Justice Gallop found, unsurprisingly, among other things, a need for a very substantial increase in public funding. He found that the allocation of existing inadequate resources showed a lack of flexibility, a lack of inventiveness and a lack of
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