Page 20 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 10 February 2015
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than the job ahead of us. Our people are confident, bold and ready. I am absolutely determined that the same be true of the government and the proceedings of this Assembly as a whole. We can flourish if we modernise and if we renew. This renewal is renewal with a purpose: to grow the economy, to make our people healthy and smart, to keep our city livable and, most importantly, to spread opportunity. It must be renewal for all.
I have said that we will govern our city in the interests of every suburb and every citizen. That is the responsibility of every member of this Assembly, not just of the ministry or of the majority who elected me. All of us must bring—to our deliberations here and to the administration of government and the development of the budget—a largeness of vision, generosity of heart, prudence in decision and precision in execution. That is the task that we face today. I present the following papers:
Legislation Program—Autumn 2015—Key themes and Government priority legislation items.
Government priorities for 2015—Ministerial statement, 10 February 2015.
I move:
That the Assembly takes note of the ministerial statement.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.02): I had not intended to respond to this statement until I read it and thought it probably was worth pointing out to this Assembly just how vacuous it is and what this attempt is. Let us be very clear about what is happening here—this very urgent piece of business that has prompted Mr Rattenbury and others to stop the more urgent business of the vote of no confidence in Minister Burch.
This is an attempt by the Chief Minister to try and reboot what has been observed by many as a very stumbling start to his chief ministership. He made a speech when he became Chief Minister outlining his plans and he has got to do it again because he is off to a very poor start. What strikes out of the focus groups is that we have got a new word and it is “renew”. The word “renew” or “renewal” or “renewed” appeared 18 times.
Those of us who were here last year remember a similar speech made by the previous Chief Minister when the buzzword was “transform”. That word was used about two dozen times as well. This mob opposite thinks that if you say a word enough times and keep saying it, people will believe it. It is like 1984, a sort of mantra-ism, an Orwellian thing, where if they just keep saying the word, the masses will believe it. The people of Canberra are not that stupid, Chief Minister. It seems that the transformers have gone. We are no longer transforming. We are renewing, and the renewers have arrived. What a vacuous load of nonsense.
Although this speech was filled with the word “renew”—just about every second word—what is informative is the words that were not there, what was not in this speech. By virtue of the fact that Andrew Barr admits that his government has got to renew—and you actually look at what the word “renew” means and what the
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