Page 3605 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 25 August 2009
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consultation to shunt the fringe festival to the edge of the city! Mr Hargreaves thought fringe festival meant it had to be on the edge of something, so he sends it to the edge of the city. He just does not fundamentally understand what a fringe festival is. We see it all the time in the failure of consultation—Mr Corbell with the ESA commissioner, and, of course, Mr Barr with the schools. This is the position adopted by the Stanhope-Gallagher government. After consulting with the community on how the Stanhope government should consult with the community, they continue to make the same mistake of disregarding those who have an opinion, are involved or have something to offer to better the ACT and better this city.
Now, why did it actually take a special project? I mean, it is not rocket science; it is nothing new. But the Stanhope-Gallagher government did not learn, has not learned, and continues not to learn about consultation. What did the community tell the Stanhope-Gallagher government? Well, it is interesting if you refer to the document. Part B of the document is key themes from the submissions. What do the submissions tell the government? Submissions emphasise the importance of openness and clarity regarding the purpose and limitations of the consultation process.
They actually wanted to know whether or not they were genuinely involved and whether or not the government would genuinely listen. I think the answer is as we see—the litany of failed consultation shows that this was a sham, and we have a government that is not interested in genuine citizen-centred governance. Indeed, community consultation in theory and practice. This is lovely—in part B.4, community consultation in theory and practice, there was an agreement that a considerable amount of community consultation was occurring in the ACT; however, the motivation and effectiveness of past and future community consultation process was queried. This is what the community told the government: “Yes, we know there’s lots of community consultation going on, but we question the motive, the motivation and the effectiveness of the past and future community consultation process.” In particular, it was felt that consultation sometimes seemed to be conducted to satisfy the process requirements or to legitimise decisions already made. That is the Chief Minister’s position. This is the way the Chief Minister often operates—we go out and consult afterwards. “I’ll make the decision, and then we’ll justify it by talking about it afterwards.”
The second dot point is that there was no real intention to take the community’s opinion into consideration in decision making. No real intention. Again, this is the Chief Minister’s responsibility. This is the man who talks about openness and accountability. This is the Chief Minister who talks about listening to the people, but what do the people think? They think that he has no real intention of taking the community’s opinion into consideration in decision feedback. There was a lack of feedback. “The government asks for what we think, but then they don’t give us any feedback.” There was sometimes no acknowledgement of contributions. The government’s response was not satisfactory, and there is a need to be assured that community views have been taken into consideration. Now, the man responsible for that is the Chief Minister. Ultimately, it is the Chief Minister who dictates the way his government works. If these are the comments on the Chief Minister’s government, if these are the comments on the way that the Chief Minister’s government is behaving—the way his ministers behave—then it is an indictment of the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister needs to answer as to why they have—
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