Page 27 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 December 2008
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Whilst I firmly believe in the separation of church and state, I recognise the importance that faith plays in many of our lives, and it is a real disservice to free speech when some of the more strident people in politics attempt to sneer at those who have Christian conviction, or to argue that they should be shunted to the fringes of any policy debate.
We are fortunate to be in a country with the freedoms, wealth and opportunities that we all enjoy. For a country of just 108 years, we are a stable democracy with integrity in our society which is the envy of the world. However, we as a nation had the advantage of not having to start from square one. We were a formation of autonomous colonies with democracy in action in each. These colonies were born on the back of the Westminster tradition.
The Westminster parliamentary tradition is one to which this Assembly subscribes. It is a tradition that has grown up over centuries of gradual refinement and long-held convention. I believe in a constitutional monarchy because of the stability and protection it has provided to safeguard our democracy against short-term political interests. The Crown is central to our political system, so long as the Crown is subject to parliament and the parliament is subject to the people.
As citizens of Australia, we are all shareholders in our nation, and this ownership is something which I take seriously. When I nominated as a candidate for election to this Assembly, I did so because of my determination to improve this city and to help get the priorities of this Assembly right. I believe the role of government is to secure and safeguard, not to stifle and suppress. I believe that good public policy is best achieved when government focuses its efforts on its core functions and doing them well.
One of the most important reasons I decided to seek election was because of my frustration with the current government—a government that has neglected the provision and upkeep of basic services such as public safety, roads and hospitals—and, of course, their poor financial management. Instead, this government has spent valuable taxpayer resources on satisfying their delusions of grandeur and has sought to turn Canberra into the nation’s leading social laboratory.
The government has put much of its focus in recent years on the introduction of civil unions, the Bill of Rights, and an extortionately expensive, luxurious prison, in a city with magistrates and judges that are strongly disinclined to penalise convicted offenders. Then there were the tens of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars the government spent on a statue of Al Grassby.
I find it staggering that the Chief Minister saw fit to nominate Terry Hicks, father of Guantanamo Bay detainee and self-confessed terrorist David Hicks, for Father of the Year. Mr Hicks is not even a Canberran, yet in Mr Stanhope’s political mission he saw fit to overlook so many Canberra fathers that work hard to help our community in extraordinary circumstances. Yet this government, that has put so much stock into being socially progressive, has no qualms collecting money on the backs of problem gamblers through poker machines. I stand against these things not only because they were the wrong priorities for the government but because they are also wrong in the absolute sense of the term.
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