Page 1795 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 May 2005
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However, I have been listening, unlike others, who prefer to hear the sounds of their own voices even when others are speaking, and what I have heard here are words like “bipartisan approach”. That came from Mrs Burke. This is really interesting because when it comes to the crunch, Labor and Liberal tend to vote together. I think we do have a bipartisan approach.
It really makes me wonder. For a start, where does it leave the other party in the Assembly? There are three parties in this Assembly and probably my own approach is far less adversarial than either of the other two parties towards each other. I find this sort of reversion to bipartisanship very interesting, and probably very rhetorical actually. So thank you. I am very happy to remain a political commentator because, as a political scientist, I do watch what happens here with some interest. I always remain interested and amused even while I see really sad things happening here.
When we offered a way that was a very low-cost, possibly almost a no-cost way of dealing with this issue, we started hearing, “It is too expensive.”
Mr Hargreaves: I didn’t say anything about that.
DR FOSKEY: It must have been you, Mrs Burke. The government will do something when it is its idea but when it is someone else’s idea, they are not too keen on taking it on board. What we have ended up with is, I think, a little improved. We do have a date now and although that is a very meagre achievement, perhaps in the context of this place it is an achievement. So I feel as though there has been a little bit of progress today.
It disappoints me when people who say they are strong advocates for social justice and that they really care about the homeless and so on really just buckle at the knees when it comes to doing something. That is what our motion was about.
Mrs Burke: Where were you the last two years?
DR FOSKEY: Mrs Burke, it was about doing something. Every other thing that we have so far put up has been rejected. This was just a little thing that might have got done.
Mrs Burke: Keep on trying.
DR FOSKEY: Okay. I just wanted to put that on the record. Housing, health and education are really at the crux of movements towards social justice. Access to housing is the basis for enabling people to get a job. You have to have an address. You have to have somewhere to wash your clothes. You have to have a bed to sleep in.
Mr Hargreaves: I do all that myself.
DR FOSKEY: My house does not do that either, but I still find that a house facilitates my doing it. I close there. We will be following this. We will certainly be looking forward to the minister’s report and it is very likely that there will be a lot of input in that report from the people whom he says are the so-called experts. Some of them are experts through experience. They live with the situation. Others are experts because they work with it and others are experts because they have done heaps and heaps of study and
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