Page 26 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 10 February 2015
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through this minister’s incompetence. There is a chance to renew right here for the Chief Minister, and he should take that opportunity.
I refer members back to the debates of February last year and the points that were made by the opposition. Some of the points that were highlighted—we will remind the Assembly of those again today—included breaches of law and abject failures in the childcare and protection system where we saw children left in homes without heating and with broken glass. We have seen the bullying at CIT and the inaction from this government to address those issues that have left staff there—not just one or two; dozens of staff—traumatised.
We have seen a series of failings in education—the maintenance of schools, pressure in schools. We have seen this minister go into a public school as education minister and hand out applications to join the Labor Club. We have seen the failures at Bimberi and the minister going into that place, putting her hands over her ears when the staff raised concerns and saying, “La, la, la,” which was incredibly disrespectful. We have seen the closing of the Women’s Information and Referral Centre that caused a great deal of trauma for those women who received services from that centre who, in many cases, were some of the most vulnerable women in our society.
We saw the incredibly offensive tweet about the federal education minister that was humiliating, and we saw this minister fund, through taxpayers’ money, a Nazi strip show at the Multicultural Festival. I see Mr Rattenbury smiling. He thinks it is a joke. It is all a joke; nobody cares about this sort of stuff and the impact on our society. Let me quote from the chair of the multicultural forum in the ACT, who represents our multicultural community, Diana Rahman. Let us hear what she said about that action by Joy Burch:
… insulted quite a few people along the way, definitely the German community and of course our friends in the Jewish community, it is just simply unacceptable … Those who made the decision that allowed that to happen should be made accountable and we should know who they are.
Well, we do know who it is. It was this minister, Joy Burch. She went on:
It has nothing to do with multiculturalism and, in fact, it was insulting and it insulted quite a few people, and I think it insulted people’s sensibilities, people’s sense of dignity …
That is the consequence of this minister’s action—the chair of the multicultural forum saying it insulted people’s dignity. Do not think that this is some Liberal beat-up; that is the chair of the multicultural forum.
But since that litany of failure and insult to this community we have seen a couple of other things. We have seen what happened on Tharwa Drive, and I will leave the Tuggeranong members to talk about that. But I know that at the latest meeting of the Tuggeranong Community Council a bunch of Labor mates turned up to protect Joy Burch and moved hostile motions against the chair of the Tuggeranong Community Council in an endeavour to protect this minister. That is disgusting. It is outrageous that a bunch of Labor mates turn up to try and intimidate the Tuggeranong Community Council.
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