Page 1070 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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$111,000. Is Ms Bresnan proposing another round of such costs to Canberrans? And how will a dedicated WAT model be deployed? What guarantees will Ms Bresnan’s motion give to the disability community that all who want, not just need, transportation on a “ready to travel now” basis can get it?
Drilling down to a more practical level, how will drivers be engaged? What salary levels will be provided? Will this dedicated model provide to Canberrans with disabilities, and their families, a better deal? What is the evidence? And, if this initiative were to fail, how much would it cost Canberrans to fix it? What risk management measures will be in place should such a scenario play out?
It is one thing to think up the idea, as the Greens have done. It is another to implement it and make it work. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate for the Greens to push for a feasibility study prior to or even during the PWC review. That said, at present, agreeing to Ms Bresnan’s motion and such ill–thought-out amendments is not one of our options. This is, after all, the same Greens party that supported the government’s efficiency dividend initiatives to axe support services for our public school system last year. This is what happens when you run interference for the government: you forget to hold them accountable. And we cannot be a party to this.
We are not defending the government’s position in our response to this motion, but we are bringing to the table salient considerations. Perhaps in the emotive haste of this motion the potential knock-on effects and the best interests of the disability community have not been properly considered. In short, what we are saying is that, unless the Greens can bring to light more evidence of the viability and sustainability of what is being proposed, this Assembly needs to make its decision based on concrete proof that members of our disability community will not in effect be let down by this motion.
Having fought hard for the rights of people with disabilities over the course of my time here in the Assembly, having seen the daily trials that these individuals have to go through, I will not toy with their lives on motions that are ill thought out. It would be impertinent to do so.
Given the finite resources that government budgets have and the consequent cost-of-living pressures encountered by our community as a result of the ACT Labor-Greens alliance, we need to approach the issues in this motion pragmatically to get the best outcome for the disability community. Unfortunately, lacking hard evidence, Ms Bresnan’s proposal cannot make such guarantees.
We need to step back for a moment from the idyllic normative illusion of what the Greens are painting for us in this motion today and tally this up with the realities of limited resources and mounting cost pressures for all Canberrans, especially members of the disability community.
The changes that this motion calls for are not well constructed and have the propensity to abort other committed initiatives that may be in the pipeline, while disregarding the inherent public costs that are at play. Under such circumstances, we the Canberra Liberals find it hard to support this motion. It is big on promise but lends
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