Page 2476 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 1 July 2008
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into employment, to encourage recycling, is a model. Mr Gentleman was there when we talked to a Welsh gentleman who thought it was just wonderful and said what a great shining beacon Revolve was to people throughout the world in terms of recycling. But the government made it as hard as possible for Revolve to get a re-lease of what they were doing well at the Mugga tip and then tried to screw them over problems in terms of the 12 months site they gave them, hoping they would go away. I hope you have got some resolution to that one. I suspect you may have something in the pipeline there. I hope you do, but I doubt it very much.
You do not consult. The only time you attempt to do anything is when you react. When there is enough media pressure on you, you react because you think, “This is going to be a bad look,” and you still do not consult. People should not have to go to the media to get action from a government. These simple basic things like Revolve, like the Macgregor tip, like even Macarthur, which has been the greatest botch of the century in terms of how you people have stuffed that up, can be resolved by simply talking to people.
They will not always agree with you. You will not always agree with them. You may have things you want to do, but you should put them on the table, talk to people about them and walk them through it. You nod, Mr Barr, and so you should. You should have done that with school closures.
Mr Barr interjecting—
MR STEFANIAK: You should have put on the table the fact that you were looking at it—instead of hiding it and springing it in the functional review, springing it after a memo from the then education minister sort of saying, “We’ll have a look at a couple of things with schools, but nothing to do with closure.”
Mr Barr interjecting—
Opposition members interjecting—
MR STEFANIAK: You sprang school closures on them.
Mr Barr interjecting—
MR STEFANIAK: That is your smug, arrogant attitude again; here we go.
MR SPEAKER: Order, members! Mr Stefaniak has the floor.
MR STEFANIAK: Thank you. If you had told people, “We have a problem here and we need to address it,” that would have been different from what you said for 15 years, but who cares? At least you might have seen the light and said: “Yes, there is a problem. Let’s talk about it. We will probably have to close some schools.” You take the community with you—and you are not going to please everyone and you are not going to please probably a few people whose schools you close, but the rest of the community will say: “Well, at least we were consulted. We were told. They didn’t leave us in the dark. They didn’t treat us like mushrooms. They didn’t spring something on us.”
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