Page 3774 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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effective scare campaigns or distributing misleading, defamatory, inflammatory and dishonest leafleting campaigns, such as the Liberal Party.
Whatever the outcome of this election, I doubt that relations between the ACT and the federal government will become that much better when it comes to funding. I hope that is not the case, by the way; I am talking about history. We may, however, finally get to see some policies, such as civil unions, introduced in the ACT and not kyboshed by the federal government and we might see a few dollars attached. We might see sustainability as a theme and the federal government assisting the ACT in, for instance, developing our public transport system, introducing light rail and many other issues that we think would take us to a much more sustainable status.
If anyone would be aware of the damage wrought by the Howard government on the role of the Senate, it would well be the Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans. This is what he said about majority governments:
However cogent the argument, there will remain a hard core of the hard-nosed who only want governments to get on and govern, and who require only the ability at regular intervals to remove them if they do not. Such people will continue to scorn all safeguards as wasteful and inefficient, a drag on the market”.
The real realists, however, are those who know that, while their wallets may be intact for the time being, their pockets will not remain unpicked and their rights untrampled if their chosen representatives are given a free rein between elections indefinitely. Such people are properly sceptical of the claim that “strong government equals economic growth”. They will welcome the timely installation of safeguards to curb malfeasance at an early stage. Australia is now undersupplied with safeguards, and oversupplied with public scandals, not counting the misdeeds we do not get to hear about. We should preserve the safeguards that exist and think very carefully about new ones.
Whilst I am not as optimistic about the election of a Rudd government as the ACT ALP government is, I do believe that the 11 years of Howard government have seen a sort of souring of politics at the federal level. I believe it has been a grey cloud over Canberra, one that has been palpably felt here more than anywhere else, and I very much look forward to waking up on Sunday and seeing that that grey cloud of the dampening of human optimism and hope is lifted. Of course, I would like the grey clouds that are working at the moment to be there, however.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella) (5.33): Paragraph (3) of the Chief Minister’s motion “notes that the abolition of Work Choices would remove the threat to the livelihoods of working Canberrans and their families”. Why was it necessary for the Liberal government to inflict such dreadful legislation on an unsuspecting Australian workforce?
I do not believe it could have been due to the state of the economy, as the Liberal government’s own claim is that the Australian economy has been going gangbusters for the past few years. Company profits have never been higher, as proved by the amounts paid to some CEOs. Australia is in the middle of a resources boom, as
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