Page 2760 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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It goes on to say that there will be meetings. But really what it boils down to is that that is going to be information: “We’ve decided what is going to happen and we are going to tell you about it. We will listen to what you say.” But I think the outcome is pretty much firmly determined, and this is unfortunate. I hope that we do not have to recommit the issue of consultation in Hawker in this Assembly and I hope that the Chief Minister will become more attuned to talking to people in his electorate about what they might and might not want in that area and try to come to some real consensus in relation to the Hawker shops and the redevelopment, or the possible redevelopment, on that site.
In relation to industrial relations, the minister himself spoke at length about the way forward in this coming financial year in relation to occupational health and safety, but—before my voice completely gives out on me—the one thing that the minister was silent on was where he was going to in relation to the sale of shopgood fireworks. Mr Hargreaves has, on a number of occasions, told standing committees and select committees what he thought the policy should be. In fact, in February 2009 Mr Hargreaves told the Standing Committee on Public Accounts that he was preparing a cabinet submission in relation to the banning of fireworks and he also stated his personal opinion when he said:
So please, committee, do not ask me if I am going to recommend this ban; just ask me when I am going to recommend this ban.
Also he told the Select Committee on Estimates that he had had an enormous amount of contact with the general community and that he would be taking a cabinet submission forward and “I will be recommending that they be banned and I will be doing this on the basis of my position on animal welfare and also on illegal use.” It was interesting to see, after this, that the minister then played this matter out in the public, I think in a misguided attempt to bring his colleagues with him. And what we have seen is the annual unholy and unedifying fight, with a minister expressing his views on a subject but not actually able or willing to implement a regime where we have a coherent approach to the sale.
Actually, we have a coherent approach to the sale; it is quite well regulated. But we do not have a coherent approach to the hard bit, which is the discharge of crackers. There is no policing of this. Perhaps the police and regulatory services do not have the right weapons in their arsenal and perhaps this might be a place where on-the-spot fines might be of more use to police and regulatory services than the process that they have to go through at the moment. But what we see is that, for the umpteenth year, we have this on again, off again public discourse on the issue of shopgood fireworks, simply because members of the Stanhope government cannot get their act together.
I suppose it boils down to that it seems to be a microcosm of the paralysis that we see in the Stanhope government at the moment. We have people trying to force their hands, we have obvious disunity and a government that cannot make decisions. It cannot make a decision on bungers, so how can they possibly run the budget, run the economy and bring the economy into some sort of control.
Ms Gallagher: Well, we are. The reality is that we are.
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