Page 2485 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 1 July 2008
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Even putting that aside, even putting aside the breach of faith that that represents, the community was very concerned. The minister talks about the number of meetings that he went to, but we know that in many instances people were not really listened to. We know that in relation to particular schools they were not able to be given actual reasons why their school should close. Instead there was just the broad statement, “Well, we need to close schools because we’ve got all these empty desks.” That is a failure of consultation. That is perhaps the most fundamental failure of consultation, but there are many more.
We saw the issue of pay parking at the hospital. This is more that can be put in the box and you can say that, if you had asked anyone in the community whether it was a good idea, you would have realised it was a dumb idea and you would not have done it. If you had actually had consultation, you would have realised very quickly what a ridiculous proposal this was—to have pay parking at the hospital on Saturdays and Sundays, on Sundays until 8.00 pm, when you do not have to pay for parking anywhere else in Canberra. Yet, at our hospital, if you were visiting a sick relative, you had to pay for parking.
That is in the category of: “If you’d asked any half-sensible person to tell you what they think about that, you would have known it’s a dumb idea and not done it.” That is where decent consultation may have been appropriate, although many would argue that those charged with making decisions on behalf of the community probably should have known that was a dumb idea. They probably did not even need to consult on that one. They could have just said: “No, that’s a dumb idea. We reject it. We won’t even bother to pursue it.” Of course, this government did pursue it and then we saw the backflip once they realised what a dumb idea it was.
Probably the worst example of how this government treats the community was in relation to the Griffith library model of consultation. The Griffith library model of consultation is to say, “We would have consulted but we knew what you would say.” The government essentially is saying: “The community is not going to like it; therefore let’s not consult on it. Therefore, let’s just ram it through.” Once again, that is where we go back to the first point: it is incumbent upon governments to be honest about these issues before an election and take some of these things to the community. Of course, we have not seen that level of honesty, but we have seen from Mr Hargreaves a statement of principle as to what this government stands for and as to how this government treats the community. We could perhaps put it more eloquently—and this has been paraphrased in a number of ways—by saying, “We didn’t consult you because we knew what you’d say.” That is the model of consultation from this government. We have spoken at length about the way they treated the Tuggeranong power station issue—how poorly that has been handled.
I did want to go to another model of consultation, and that is the Tharwa bridge model of consultation, which I am sure Mr Pratt will have something to say about when he speaks. That was this sort of model of consultation: “We’ll consult and we’ll tell you stuff that’s not strictly true. We’ll tell you that if we don’t build a different bridge, this bridge will fall down and then we’ll use that against you.” You give the community false information and then the community comes back and says, “I guess in that case,
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