Page 1882 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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It is also frustrating that this political stunt by the Leader of the Opposition has delayed important legislation. There is the appropriation bill, for a start, and the wages of the ACT public service to consider. Other crucial business of government has been set aside to accommodate this charade, including the Children and Young People Bill and the feed-in tariff legislation. There is the land rent legislation, an Australian first that everyone but the Liberals, with their one-song libretto on housing affordability, is acclaiming as a creative response to helping low-income earners into home ownership. They are pieces of legislation that are irrelevant to an opposition, perhaps, but important to a government that is focused on and ready for the future. They are important to the Canberra community, which has been asking us for just this kind of leadership.
Mr Speaker, this motion, which reads like something scribbled on the back of an envelope over a third bottle of wine, not only is without foundation or merit but is a contempt of this place and a contempt of our democratic processes. It is a personal attack by the Leader of the Opposition who seeks, in turn, to be exempt from scrutiny and to be freed even from the standards required for public servants who would—were the Liberals ever elected—serve him loyally and well, as they have served me. It is an attack by a man who refuses to acknowledge, let alone apologise, for misleading the community by concocting fictions about a proposed gas-fired power station for Belconnen. We heard no reference to the gas-fired power station in Belconnen in the Leader of the Opposition’s speech today. I stand amazed at the double standards.
I defend not only myself today, but also the fine, able, and professional public servants and the outstanding Canberrans whose names, along with mine, are today dragged through the mud by the Leader of the Opposition. I have not misled or concealed, and neither have they. The government and its agencies have followed proper and correct processes in identifying potential sites of land. The proponents have followed proper processes in choosing a preferred site. That is what happened here. Our recollections accord; our records are as one.
There is no smoking gun here; there is no conspiracy; there is no cover-up. There is, quite simply, a planning process underway that is yet to run its course. Indeed, the only secrecy whatsoever that has emerged over the course of this unedifying episode has been that perpetrated by the “member for Macarthur”—a sin of omission rather than commission, to be sure, and one that ordinarily would be unremarkable.
It is the Leader of the Opposition himself who has rendered the fact of his residency extraordinary and remarkable by failing to mention, until quizzed by the media, that he lived in the suburb closest to the proposed development. He has made the fact of his residency extraordinary and remarkable by keeping silent. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, he seemed unconcerned by the proximity of the development, unafraid of its impacts, until he sensed there was mischief to be made by encouraging and escalating community concern at the development. Imagine the outrage of the Leader of the Opposition; imagine the brow creased in concern and the grave look if it had been a government minister who had failed to declare a fact of such obvious pertinence. This man has the temerity to squeal and gulp about the government getting personal in the very same breath as he tries to bring me down on grounds that go to my character, my professionalism and the heart of my integrity. As if that is not personal!
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