Page 2903 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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along. I will be extremely interested, if Labor does get elected federally, to see if the dynamic changes, with federal, state and territory governments working together to improve the health system and not just finding ammunition to throw at each other. That is the great challenge, absolutely the great challenge.
How do we make these things work? You are right that there is community concern and I do not want to see the opposition just jumping on the back of that community concern to make political points. If the opposition is expressing community concerns, then I want to hear what can be done, either with a returned Liberal federal government which, over 10 years, has not actually helped our health and education systems and not actually improved housing. Let us hear those things.
I do not actually think the Chief Minister is incompetent. I can think of some other descriptions, but I do not think this is the place to make them. I will save my substantive comments on these matters for the debates that are on the paper today when all these issues will be covered again. We have got an MPI on health and a motion on Anti-Poverty Week. I am prepared to bring up my issues in those debates. There are real concerns, but I am not sure—in fact, I am absolutely positive—that they will be furthered by a debate like this. This is an oppositional debate where the government has no alternative but to oppose what the opposition says because that is the nature of the motion and that is the nature of the debate.
I wait to hear the next speaker from the government saying how fabulous the government is. Again, we will have missed the point entirely and I do not think the Canberra community will be any better off.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Minister for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, Minister for the Arts) (11.30): Mr Speaker, I think it is a matter of enormous regret that the opposition did not have the courage to wait to move a motion such as this reflecting on me at a time when I was in the chamber.
The Liberal Party agreed, on 18 July, to a pair for me this morning. I am thankful for the courtesy extended to me, through the agreement by the Liberal Party, to my being paired this morning to allow me to participate fully in a conference on climate change to be conducted by the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand. I participated in a very important conference on climate change confident in the knowledge that the Liberal Party had agreed to approve a pair for me from 10.30 on throughout the morning. Following the conference, I am opening carers’ week at midday.
The Liberal Party agreed to my being absent from the chamber this morning and then, knowing that I would be absent, chose not to formally advise me that they intended to move a motion reflecting on me. That really goes to the credibility of this particular motion. I acknowledge and thank the Liberal Party for approving a pair for me today to allow me to be absent from the chamber. But then, knowing that I would be absent and having approved a pair for me, the Liberal Party moved a motion against me that attacked me personally and directly. During the debate they actually attacked me for
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