Page 2867 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011

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to release the report. I find it extraordinary that Ms Hunter can, on the one hand, say that we should be urging the government but, on the other, vote against urging the government to release the report. That is what the motion is about. There is very little else that it is about.

There is this sort of flip-flopping from the Greens. On every vote, they seem to get further away from their stated ideals before the last election—further away from their claims about accountability and closer to the Labor Party. Here we see it again. Another of their core promises—to call for openness and accountability. In fact, they backed it. They supported the release of this review, but now they do not. So that is one more off the list.

They supported the reopening of schools, and then they backed away from that. This week we have seen them cringing at the fact that they are backing away from the Tharwa community, and the selling out of the Tharwa community has also led to the preschool not reopening, because they sold out the people of Tharwa. They have again sold out the community and moved just that little bit closer to their coalition partners—a little bit further away from what they claimed to stand for before this election. The longer this term goes, the closer we see the Labor Party and the Greens become—the more it is a coalition.

It is probably time they acknowledged it. The Liberal Party and the National Party, at a federal level, acknowledge that they are a coalition. They say it. They are open about it. They are two different parties, but they are a coalition. People know that if they vote for the National Party they are voting for a coalition government and if they vote for the Liberal Party they are voting for a coalition government. Why not just be honest with the community and say, “Yes, the Labor Party and the Greens in the ACT are a coalition.” Be honest about who you are.

You will not be able to pretend at the next election that somehow voting for the Greens is going to be a vote for change. It will not. We see it again today. We see the Greens’ attitude. Even on issues where they have stated a principle, they run away from that if they think they can ingratiate themselves with the Labor Party and their Labor Party coalition colleagues.

I commend the motion to the Assembly. We should turn over a new leaf. The Chief Minister had the opportunity to turn over a new leaf, and she has chosen not to. She can do it on many things, but in many ways she is proving to be the same as her predecessor. On everything other than the strength of conviction and the ability to deal with rogue colleagues, she is proving to be similar to her predecessor.

It is the same low standards: say one thing and do another. It is classic Labor Party spin. It is that Hawker Britton way of doing things. It is not about what you actually do just as long as you say something. Say you are committed to openness and people will think you are committed to openness. And then do everything you can not to be open.

People do grow tired of that, and they see through it. They will see through it with Katy Gallagher. She will pretend to be a number of things. But here was the test. Here


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