Page 971 - Week 04 - Thursday, 3 May 2007
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We have raised a number of examples of mistakes over these recent days, including the millions of dollars that have gone on the busway project. We have had this flim-flam situation: it is on again, it is off again, it is “not in Mr Hargreaves’s lifetime”. Then yesterday Mr Stanhope suddenly took a contrary view. Mr Hargreaves is in Broome, I think, so heaven help us when he gets back and says, “What are you doing reactivating the busway?” It will be an interesting old cabinet meeting. I wish we could get an observer’s ticket, but I suspect that will not happen.
This government just does not know where it is going. It is paralysed through factional and personality clashes. We now have an Attorney-General who is so detached and disinterested in the affairs of this parliament, of this Assembly, that today he bailed out in the middle of question time. It is quite extraordinary. Could you imagine if a John Howard minister fell asleep and then packed it in and left the chamber in question time? It would be across every newspaper in Australia. I am sure the Canberra Times probably has not even picked it up, but it was an extraordinary situation. I do not blame him. I can imagine, hearing the Chief Minister prattle on with all this nonsense, that I would probably feel like sitting outside too and having a bit of a kip. But it does trouble me that this is the government of the territory that is meant to be overseeing the interests of a third of a million people in this town, looking after them and displaying openness and competence.
This government is fast becoming a one-man band and I am afraid that one man is rapidly starting to show signs that he cannot carry the job. We have seen the fanciful project of the arboretum and the provision of $6 million for this dream of the Chief Minister’s. It is great to have dreams, but let us keep things in reality. Let us bring things back to the capacity of our territory and the priorities in our territory to fund things that are essential. We can have theme parks, we can have all sorts of things here, but let us get things right.
One of my neighbours was in Canberra Hospital over Christmas, and they did not even have one surgeon in the place—not one surgeon—and the surgeon on call was not willing to operate. That person, a medical specialist, has not been able to work since Christmas—we are now in May—because of accidents that happened in his operation. The government talks about these luxuries and these fringe things but it cannot get the fundamentals right in the city because it is putting our people who are working these facilities under undue pressure.
The government has not got its act together. We are told through the AIHW work that the health system in Canberra is not run efficiently yet this is what the government try and trot out and tell us is a good standard of service. My office filing cabinets are full of complaints from constituents about basic infrastructure needs. They are not writing to me about social legislation or building new arboreta and things like that. They are writing about basics. They are writing about: “Why aren’t the roads fixed? Why aren’t we getting the basics done? Why are they shutting down the schools? Why are all of these basic school bus services so hopelessly managed?” And the best answer we got from Mr Hargreaves was, “Well, you are always going to have trouble at the beginning of the year. You are always going to have 60 or 70 kids on a 30-seater bus.”
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