Page 884 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 April 2014
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He wants to be a doctor with a practice in Lanyon. He wants to bulk-bill and he wants to build a facility on the block of land that he purchased for that purpose, which the government sold for that purpose. As Mr Coe said last year, is it a lose-lose. Everyone is losing here until this centre is built.
Indeed, Mr Rattenbury got it wrong as well. Mr Rattenbury said he will not support something which directs the government to do anything. We do not direct the government. We are calling on the government to grant the waiver. The minister will no doubt have a process. One hopes that it is an efficient and effective process. I thought about writing the word “direct”. But I just went with the standard form, which is “calls on”. If you had read the motion, Mr Rattenbury, that is what you would have seen. The problem here is that—
Mr Hanson: Caroline would have.
MR SMYTH: Caroline would have probably read it. That is right.
Mr Rattenbury: I will pass on your love to Caroline.
Mr Coe: Please do.
Mr Hanson: Please do.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Order!
MR SMYTH: Please do. We feel we were more aligned with Caroline Le Couter and we wish she was back here in lieu of Mr Rattenbury. This is an important issue for the thousands of people that live in Lanyon and that want better services. I think it was most unfortunate that Mr Gentleman continued with his speech because in it he failed to acknowledge their needs and he certainly failed to make a case against why this motion should not be supported.
You have to then ask the question at large: what is the process when somebody is disgruntled with the government if the tsar of Treasury over there deigns not to speak to mortals and makes a decision that somebody does not agree with? From what Mr Barr says, after that decision it is now up to that individual to accept his decision that they cannot go further. How dare they go and talk to somebody else.
The process I normally put in place when people come to me is that I say to them, “There are a number of options here. You can write letters. I can write a letter. We can go to the Canberra Times. We can go to the media. We can go to a TV station or a radio station. We can ask questions in the Assembly. We can move a motion in the Assembly. There are a number of things.”
I always clear this with constituents before we take these steps because one should not have to do this. But in this case the people of my electorate are missing out. The government is missing out on revenue. We have had a number of motions on the building industry and its desperate straits. We are getting priority projects status and all sorts of other things are going to happen. The building industry misses out. The
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