Page 1830 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2011
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That is a very bizarre attitude from the Greens-Labor alliance partner. And I think the problem for the Greens is that people—
Mr Hanson: Meredith is in the team, though.
MR SMYTH: That is an interesting statement. Mr Hanson says, “Meredith is in the team.” Yes, indeed. During the budget breakfast this morning, Ms Hunter thought things were okay, there was a green tinge to the budget, things were happening. But if you read Mr Rattenbury’s motion then clearly not enough is happening and it is not happening fast enough.
If you go to this motion and the fact that the Greens have to be here today then the Greens have failed. The Greens in fact are not calling on the support, obviously, of the Labor Party, because they do not believe the Labor Party is doing it. So what they are asking for is the Liberal Party’s support to bring the government to account. So who is the third-party insurance now? Who is the balance of power now? The Greens cannot achieve this without one or two of the other parties in this place. I think we need to be serious about what happens in real life in a democracy. People form alliances, and alliances dissolve when you want to achieve something.
I want to go back to a motion I moved last year, and here is the real politics for the Greens. Last year, I moved a motion on the Loxton report that called on the government to deliver some strategies by the first sitting week this year. Mr Rattenbury, in his wisdom, watered it down. And what we got, because the Greens watered it down, was a contemptuous document of the tourism industry, a document that was contemptuous of this Assembly, because the Greens did not work with the Liberal Party to hold the government to account.
That is the problem when you take the approach that the Greens take. The government brushes you aside and, as Mr Corbell so clearly said, “There you are, carping from the sidelines.” That is all they said. They do not see you as a player. You are just on the sidelines and all you do is carp. We had the patronising lines from Mr Corbell. He is good at doing that to cover up his own failures and his own failings.
The problem for all of the people of the ACT is that the Chief Minister did not find climate change until about March 2008, before an election, when it was topical. Remember, back then it was the greatest moral dilemma facing the human race. Apparently, it is not anymore but, in 2008, that was convenient. And the Chief Minister, after seven years in power, when he had forgotten about no waste by 2010, when he had abandoned our greenhouse gas strategy and had not put his own in place for almost seven years, suddenly found religion. He got religion. He understood. He read the opinion polls. And that was all it was.
So the problem is: what do we make of today and what do we actually make of this motion? I think this motion is an admission, first and foremost, that there is some dissent in the Greens’ ranks. Ms Hunter was telling the business community this morning everything is okay in the relationship with the government, there is a tinge of green in things, that things are going okay. And we have got Mr Rattenbury today
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