Page 785 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 29 March 2006
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in here simply because it can. It takes a motion that brings to the attention of this Assembly the concerns of the people of Canberra, deletes essentially all words after “that” and replaces them with self-congratulatory praise of the Stanhope government. I am particularly struck by proposed new paragraph 1 (c), which states:
that the Stanhope Government has invested additional $130.775 million over five years in Emergency Services since the January 2003 bushfires.
But what do we get for it? No matter what the issue is, it is the constant claim of the Stanhope government that they have spent so much money on it. But so much money does not necessarily mean that you get the best results. The solution is to spend smarter, perform smarter and not necessarily always be saying, “We must be committed because we have spent an awful lot of money on it.”
This is the constant reaction of the Stanhope government. We saw it this morning with the sports motion and we will see it again and again. When the crossbench and the opposition raise any concerns in here, the government uses its numbers to squash any dissension and comes up with this self-congratulatory appraisal. If we went through and looked at all the motions passed in this place, I am sure that we would think, “Why do we bother to debate motions that pat the Stanhope government on the back?”
We are in this situation simply because of the tyranny of the majority here. They will not brook any sort of criticism; nor do they have the sheer guts to say, “We disagree with that motion. We will vote it down.” They do not have the courage to vote something down that they disagree with. They show their arrogance in yet another way—they spend their time creating gloss and glitz. Mr Stanhope and his ministers say, “You cannot complain about what we do because we have spent so much money.”
I commend the minister for marking the fact that we are debating this motion today by having the land adjacent to my residence slashed this morning. I congratulate him for it. I will go out and inspect it and make sure that it was done properly and that all the acacia wildlings that have come up since it was last cleared in about May last year have been taken away. My neighbours and I diligently mow them, but they still keep coming up.
Mr Hargreaves: Zero.
MRS DUNNE: Do I have permission to use Zero on public lands? I think not. But I would like to see more work done across the territory to remove the vast mounts of acacia wildings and suckers that have come up in the wake of the fires. Clearing and slashing is a matter of concern because the regrowth is a considerable concern.
Regrowth and grass growth across the territory was in the forefront of Mr Pratt’s mind when he bought forward this motion. We should be thanking him for bringing it forward because it brings to the attention of people in the territory the situation that they are in. They are placed in very vulnerable situations. Dr Foskey is correct that a lot of it is down to individual vigilance, but there is a vast amount of public land that backs on to residences in the ACT. At one stage, when I was the adviser to the Minister for the Environment, I did actually know the figure. It is some hundreds of kilometres of land backing on to public reserves.
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