Page 6 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 5 November 2008
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only been magnified by a majority. And I genuinely believe that they are concerns and anxieties that are directly addressed—and, I hope, answered—in the administrative reforms that have been agreed to by Labor and the Greens over the past week or so.
Many of these reforms are minor in nature but symbolically and practically important. And I believe that they will stand this place in good stead over our second two decades of self-government—no matter who is in government, and no matter whether that government is a minority or a majority one.
Most significantly, there are new and enhanced roles for our new Assembly committees so that they are better informed about the rationale for particular decisions and better able to feed directly and harmoniously into government policy-making processes. This is a significant change and one that will enable our small parliament to make better use of the skills of all 17 of its members.
Perceptions count for a great deal in politics. Being seen to cross the t’s and to dot the i’s sometimes seems, in the public eye, to be as important as actually doing it. I accept that on some occasions over the past term, even when my government was assiduously crossing and dotting, the perception amongst some in the community was that we were not genuine.
Part of our difficulty was that we were consulting on tough issues, seeking views on subjects that were always guaranteed to leave a proportion of people dissatisfied— issues upon which politicians do not like to make decisions any time, any year, indeed ever. Another difficulty was that we were pioneers, making decisions that had been put off and put off and that we were now taking—en masse—at the one moment in our history when it seemed most possible to take them.
Labor might have used majority government to pursue a more progressive social agenda; instead, it used the gift of majority to build the fiscal foundations that will allow all governments of all complexions to pursue whatever social agenda they care to without constant fear of bankruptcy. In the process we did cause hurt. We did anger people. We did things that no Labor government cares to do. Some actions were executed clumsily. Some decisions could have been better argued and better justified. And that is why, based on our experience, we are embarking on a wholesale review of community consultation.
We need to review not just how we engage but how we use the responses we get and how we let Canberrans know exactly how their views feed into the decision-making process. There will be some—the hardened cynics—who will say this is for effect, just theatre. I trust that most Canberrans know by now that I do not do stunts, that I do not say what I do not mean, that what you see from my government is exactly and precisely what you get: a government that does learn from experience, that never believes automatically that its way is the only way or that this is as good as it gets.
There are a small number of Canberrans who know this better than others: my Labor colleagues, and in particular my ministerial colleagues, Katy Gallagher, Simon Corbell, John Hargreaves and Andrew Barr, who have wept blood in caucus and cabinet over their dreams and ideas, who have taken the tough decisions with me and who have borne the odium with me.
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