Page 224 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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Then there is the other candidate, who is probably more likely to win that count back, and that is Dave Peebles. Dave Peebles gave childcare a pretty big mention in most of his literature. Everyone probably saw these DLs. They say, “Helping working families with affordable housing and childcare”. Every household in the electorate got that about 11 times, so he made that point, I think. It was also on his website: “I am strongly committed to policies that will promote affordable housing, and that will make life for families a little easier, for example, by providing excellent child care services”. Where does this fit into the Labor Party’s plans to shut down Gumnut? He did not quite articulate that in his website.
Nor did he articulate that in his newsletters. Some people would have seen the Page Times, the Belconnen Times, the Nicholls Times, the Higgins Times or the Charnwood Times. You may think that they are actually six or seven different pieces. No; afraid not. The only thing that is different is really the title. The old syndication has worked pretty nicely for old Dave when it comes to printing these. One thing that is common in each of these—other than the word “Times”—is “Helping working families with affordable housing and childcare”. And:
The Government—
the ACT Stanhope Labor government; they do not mention Jon Stanhope here, though—
has also invested in improving childcare facilities to help working families.
“I know from my own family’s experience how important quality childcare facilities are to working families”, said Dave.
That was in his own newsletter. He said that again in the Belconnen Times; he said it again in the Nicholls Times; he said it again in the Higgins Times; and he said it again in the Charnwood Times.
Mrs Dunne: Why is Nicholls full colour and Charnwood only black and white?
MR COE: That is a very good point. How does he rate these suburbs? I think you can pretty much work out Dave’s strategy by whether he went for the high gloss for the suburb or the low gloss and whether he went for the old Gestetner or whether he went for high quality, probably 150 gsm, and spent a few hundred bucks in Nicholls and the Belconnen Times. What it does say is that perhaps they were more interested in politics than policy. Perhaps he was more interested in targeting Labor votes in Nicholls and in Belconnen than in Charnwood, Page or Higgins.
More importantly, it shows that the Labor Party is not at all committed to childcare. This is a pretty easy one for the government. Here you have someone other than government delivering a service which everyone seems to love and they do not have to do anything about it. Yet somehow they manage to stuff it up. Only Stanhope Labor has this ability.
I am not sure whether Ms Burch has learnt from her fellow right factional colleague Andrew Barr how to be arrogant on these sorts of things and how to drag her feet and
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