Page 1102 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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about transformation. She could not bring herself to say transformation—“transformational”—until about seven minutes into her speech, but we got there in the end.
We have had the whole lot. The whole cacophony has spoken today. And what have we got from this motion? Absolutely nothing. We have been going for almost two hours now. We get this sort of recitation of where we are, where we have been and all these things that we have done, but very few of those opposite have spoken about the ordinary Canberran and whether or not they feel any better off. The reason they do not speak about that is that they cannot point to where people feel better off under this government.
You only have to go to health. The health system that used to have the shortest waiting lists in the country has now got some of the longest waiting lists in the country. I am sure that if Mr Hanson had his chance to say some more he could go through that litany of failure in the delivery of health services that is characterised by the scandal last year with doctoring the data in the emergency department.
Mr Hanson: That was a transformation.
MR SMYTH: That was a transformation.
Mr Hanson: Transforming bad results into good results.
MR SMYTH: They transformed the data from bad data into good data, and it blew up in their faces. Talk about transformation!
And there is Mr Gentleman. Somebody has written him a speech which he reads. He talks about how good it is that they have done master plans for Tuggeranong. For years we asked for a master plan for Erindale, and it did not happen. We asked for a master plan for Tuggeranong; Mr Corbell said, “Well, it is not old enough yet, and the mistakes have not been embedded so far yet. We do not need a master plan to make it up.” Mrs Jones will tell you: in August 2010, when we doorknocked Kambah, as a result of going and talking to the people of Kambah, we know that they said, “Give us a master plan, because the Kambah shops do not work.”
I am very pleased, and in this case I congratulate Mr Barr, because he saw the value of master planning. Mr Corbell did not; Mr Barr did. We had a bit of a transformation. Now we have twisted all the way back. Maybe we have gone from Bumblebee back to Cliffjumper, although I suspect Airachnid and Breakdown would be more appropriate for the two gentlemen on the other side of this chamber.
Today’s policy seems to be: “If we say ‘transformational’ enough, everybody will think that we are transformers. And if we say ‘transformational’ enough, then people might stop talking about being green and progressive.” You cannot escape it, and you cannot shrug it off, no matter how many visits the transformational fairy makes to the caucus room and the speechwriters over there. You can come up with as many words as you want, but Mr Hanson has hit the nail on the head. This progressive Greens
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