Page 4133 - Week 13 - Thursday, 2 December 2021
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our hospital—and they are all laughing over the other side; they think it is all a bit of a laugh!—they wait longer than anyone else in Australia. Well, Merry Christmas, and congratulations to this government on the longest waiting times across Australia and the longest waiting times that we have seen in the ACT’s history and.
For all those people out there paying their electricity bills—and we will see those bills go up while the rest of the country sees them go down—for people in the jail system, for people across every sector, it is difficult for me to get up here following the self-congratulatory speeches of the Labor Party and the Greens and to not put on the record the shameful treatment that we have of our front-line staff and the result that that plays out with our children finding themselves in split classes with NAPLAN. While we build shiny new offices for ourselves over the road, our teachers are in demountables and kids are in ancient schools which, as we have seen, have had manifest problems with hazardous materials. In some cases, schools are just bursting at the seams. They are overcrowded and do not have adequate facilities.
We should be working harder. This is a mob that voted against having extra sittings in this place, which we could have had next year, which is disappointing. I and my colleagues will continue to work hard to hold this government to account and to advocate for our front-line workers, be they the police or the hardworking staff at the AMC, whom Mrs Kikkert has represented tirelessly on their behalf.
It is a tough job in opposition; there is no doubt about it. I think Elizabeth Lee is doing a tremendous job across the board in leading the Canberra Liberals team. I and my colleagues will work tirelessly to see her in that position.
Merry Christmas, Madam Speaker. Merry Christmas, Minister Stephen-Smith. You are the cause of the highlights of a number of issues that I think this government should reflect on, and I hope that you do. I hope that when you put aside your self-congratulations you will reflect on those over the Christmas period. You have got a long break, a long holiday, to think about these things. Do you think about the police; do you think about the workers in the jail; do you think about the health workers; do you think about the people queuing up at ED; do you think about the people paying their rates, which, if they have not tripled, are well on the way to tripling; do you think about the people who turn on their lights and their electricity bills and what they are going to have to pay?
I say thanks to Elizabeth Lee and thanks to my colleagues in the Canberra Liberals. We will not be as self-congratulatory. We will continue to realise that people out there in our community are doing it tough.
I would like to put on the record my thanks to my office, to Ian and to Jess, who I am sure would love to work longer and harder with me. I have no doubt about that. I would say, in a little moment of Christmas cheer, that they have decorated my office door beautifully. They have cut up little bits of the blue and the notice paper and have formed it into a Christmas tree. It is worth looking at. I think it is a little piece of Christmas art.
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