Page 1563 - Week 04 - Thursday, 25 March 2010
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but finally the Speaker has chosen my lucky envelope. It is a pleasure to be here talking on such a significant matter of public importance, which is the importance of open, honest and accountable government.
You would think that a statement like that would be a real gift for a government. They can talk about all their great achievements, their track record and their proud history of transparency and openness—perestroika and glasnost—but I am afraid Mr Stanhope resembles Joseph Stalin more than he does Mikhail Gorbachev. So it is a bit disappointing.
But let us start at the beginning. Let us go back to 2001, the beginning of Mr Stanhope. I was not of voting age at the 2001 election, but I still had the literature. It is interesting that in a letter that he wrote to all Canberrans, with a postal vote application, he said, “Only Labor can deliver united, responsible and financially accountable government.” Accountable government. I wonder whether, if they were to put those words into a flyer these days and deliver it to all Canberra households, there would be furious agreement—
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MR COE: That is right. At least this brochure was paid for by the Labor Party, albeit poker machine revenue; whereas the document that I got a few weeks ago in my mailbox was a nice glossy document of about eight or 10 pages which went into great detail about all the great achievements of Jon Stanhope. I note that the GDE was not mentioned. I note that the disastrous way they have handled Calvary was not documented properly. I note that the school closures saga, where three schools in my electorate—Hall, Flynn and Cook—were closed unduly was not there. I note the Ernst & Young report was not mentioned in that brochure. I note that the Green Square saga also was not included in that document of triumphs—triumphs of the Chief Minister.
Throughout it talked about “our community”. I am afraid Mr Stanhope has lost touch with our community, so much so that we had a situation today where the Chief Minister was so irrelevant and had no idea about leadership and leading his current team that he had to come into the chamber with an excerpt from Hansard from a couple of days ago to back himself up. He sought to table Hansard to give himself relevance. It is very disappointing that we have this sort of person running our territory at the moment.
Firstly, I go to the Department of Territory and Municipal Services strategic budget review. Getting this document out of the government was a real effort. It took over a year of government resistance. It took a year of questioning. It took a considerable amount of effort from the opposition to get this document to be public. It took a great deal of effort to get this document, which talks about transparency, out into the open. It is pretty interesting that they should have a document which calls on the government to be more transparent and they will not even table it. They would not even table a document which talks about them becoming more transparent and how they are not.
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