Page 2276 - Week 07 - Thursday, 27 August 2020
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I am hopeful that after I have finished my valedictory we might be about to pass legislation to stop misleading political advertising.
I will not go through the whole laundry list of Greens achievements, but I am very pleased to have been part of making the Greens agenda happen.
There are a few, possibly smaller, achievements that I am particularly proud of because it is unlikely they would have happened without me being here. I am thinking of the land tax exemption for affordable rentals, which I started work on in the Seventh Assembly; stopping the Federal Golf Club expanding at the top of its land, which, I know as an ex-Garran resident has been on the agenda for about 20 years; an extension of seniors’ rates deferral to the average older Canberran and not just those in the more expensive parts of town.
Two of those items were in areas where I was able to co-operate with the Liberal Party. One of the frustrations of my time here is that there has not been much co-operation with the Liberals, due, I would have to say, to reservations on both sides. In the Seventh Assembly I was one of four Greens in an Assembly of 17 and now I am one of, unfortunately, only two Greens in an Assembly of 25. For me, this has been frustrating in many ways.
I sincerely thank my fellow Greens MLA, Shane Rattenbury, for his support and his work on behalf of the people of Canberra and the Greens. I have no doubt that his and his staff’s work as part of the ACT government has led to many improvements in the ACT government’s actions and policies. I equally have no doubt that much of that work has been either unacknowledged by or in fact claimed by the ALP.
Moving onto to my more major frustrations, I, and even more my office and the women of Canberra, put a lot of effort into trying to improve ACT legislation to require a positive definition of “sexual consent”. It is fair enough that people should say yes to sex if they want it or no if they don’t. Despite me presenting two bills on the subject to the Assembly, this remains important unfinished business for the ACT, as witnessed by continuing reports of sexual violence in the ACT.
The government’s reluctance to provide information to the community is high on my mental list of frustrations. As you all know, as a backbencher I can ask questions in the chamber and on notice. I tell people that is my one superpower—I can ask questions and the government must answer me, although sometimes the answer is effectively content-free. I am still frustrated that the Assembly does not have an accessible, searchable database of responses to questions on notice, and I hope this will be addressed soon.
Last year I asked a series of questions about public transport patronage with network 19 because the government was not telling anyone how the new network was going. Even worse was the consultation on the route for light rail from Civic to Woden. During this consultation the government refused to even tell us how long it would take to travel between Civic and Woden on the planned routes, even though they surely knew.
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