Page 5875 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 7 December 2011
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She says:
After 12 long years of federal Liberal neglect of the ACT, it is great to be able to work with the federal Labor government to build infrastructure—to fill the “project pipeline”—and to assure the jobs of Canberrans into the future.
I am happy to peg the record of the Howard government on things like the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum, the Barton Highway and the Federal Highway. I have read the list in here before. It is a very slim list since the Labor Party has been in office. It is interesting to read the last two paragraphs of Ms Porter’s speech:
The Chief Minister has stood up for Canberra. She has written to the federal Liberals regarding their scheme to sack Canberrans. Today we call on the Leader of the Opposition to follow the Chief Minister’s lead.
Quite apart from the fact that he had already done it. She continued:
I am not going to hold my breath on that, but I call on him to do that, to write to his federal colleagues … and suggest to them that to do what they are proposing would decimate Canberra. If those on the other side of the house care about Canberra and Canberrans, as they are constantly telling us they do, then they will do this.
As I said, I am not holding my breath, but today we call on the Leader of the Opposition to follow the lead of the Chief Minister. We call on him to stand up for the Canberra community. We call on him to write to his federal colleagues regarding their anti-Canberra worker stance. We call on him to publicly denounce the federal Liberal scheme to sack Canberrans.
Let us substitute the words: “As I said, I am not holding my breath, but today we call on the Chief Minister to follow the lead of the Leader of the Opposition. We call on her to stand up for the Canberra community. We call on her to write to her federal colleagues regarding their anti-Canberra worker scheme. We call on her to publicly denounce the federal Labor scheme to sack Canberrans.”
That is the guts of what Ms Porter said. It is the guts of the argument today. I look forward to when the Chief Minister, standing up to support this motion, agrees that she will do so. Perhaps she will surprise us and reveal that she has already written. I would be delighted to hear that. I would be surprised—and I would be surprised if Mr Barr has done it, given that when the last round of cuts came to cultural institutions he was dubbed the “chief cheerleader” of the cuts to places like the National Gallery. He actually thought it was good to cut the National Gallery. He thought it was good because it would cut their travelling exhibition program so that people would have to come to Canberra. Not even Kate Lundy bought that one. Not even Kate Lundy had the temerity to even attempt to defend that little statement on the ABC when Mr Barr dropped that one into the argument. It will be interesting to see what Mr Barr has to say today about the proposal to cut up to 3,000 jobs.
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