In a Question Time when the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, proudly announced that the ACT’s economy had overtaken that of Tasmania, it was difficult to reflect upon anything, let alone the sin of pride, because of the incessant quipping and interjection from around the House.
The sin of pride was briefly referred to by Tony de Domenico who said the Minister for Urban Services, Terry Connolly, “”with chest blown out” had taken credit for achieving efficiencies in ACTION when in fact it had the lowest cost recovery and the lowest kilometres per vehicle in Australia and the second-lowest performance on a list of other measures.
Trevor Kaine interjected that any improvement were a result of Alliance Government initiatives. When Helen Szuty asked the Minister for Health, Wayne Berry, when would the ACT get a health-complaints unit, Mr de Domenico interjected sarcastically: “”In the fullness of time. When the time is ripe.”
He was referring to Wednesday’s Question Time when that was the response of Mr Berry to accusations that the Government was being dilatory in setting up a cancer registry.
Now it is easy to get distracted in Question Time. The combination of the cancer registry, the sin of pride and the interjections led me to thinking about Hector Kinloch, an MLA in the last assembly, who died after what is usually referred to as “”a long battle with cancer”.
It’s a silly phrase, because as Mr de Domenico and many others can attest, people don’t “”battle” with cancer; they live with it rather than against it and like the rest of us take each day as it comes.
Anyway, Hector was a Quaker, and his memorial service at the weekend (to which nearly all MLAs attended) provided the solution to hecklers and interjectors at Question Time. Parts of Question Time are just like a Quaker funeral. Anyone can stand up and wait for a call to speak. There is no structure to it.
There the similarity ends. At the Quaker funeral there is a silence of at least a minute between speakers. And there are no interjections.
It gives time for people to reflect up what was said. Instead of firing from the hip with the sin of pride. I commend the Quaker approach to the Speaker of the Assembly.
In the absence of reflective silence, Ms Follett pointed to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures which showed that the ACT’s gross state product was $8,812,000,000 compared to Tasmania’s $8,595,000. It is not wise to make per-head comparisons with Tasmania, but the ACT has some 300,000 people compared to Tasmania’s 450,000, making Canberrans seem even more wealthy, but then Tasmania does not have the largesse of a Federal bureaucracy at its doorstep, so comparing ourselves with Tasmania is a little like shooting an apple off the head with a cruise missile.
Ms Follett took several questions from the Opposition on the “”Betrayal Budget” on notice. She pointed out, without pride, that “”it is not my Budget”.
Yesterday and Wednesday were the first times The Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, told David Lamont (Lab) that he would present a ministerial statement on betterment tax next week.
He had been monitoring how things had been going. “”Badly,” interjected Michael Moore (Ind).
Mr Connolly told Annette Ellis that the “”black hole” at Woden Bus Interchange would be demolished before Christmas and the interchange would have higher ceilings and more light so that people, especially the elderly, would not be scared of going there. He admitted that it was not as well designed as the Tuggeranong interchange.
At which no-one interjected that the design of that interchange had resulted in drivers’ bans for weeks because of an “”unsafe” ramp.
Lou Westende’s hypothetical about what would happen if the High Court took away the ACT’s de-facto excise tax on X-rated videos (and perhaps booze, tobacco and petrol) was treated as precisely that by Ms Follett who saliently pointed out that she could into read the minds of High Court judges.
Mr Moore wondered why forms and bills given by ACT authorities to citizens perplexed the semi-literate. He was especially concerned about traffic infringement notices. Ms Follett wondered (aloud) why the print could not be made bigger while I wondered (silently) how the semi-literate passed a driver’s licence test in the first place. Ms Follett said more would be done to make government forms more accessible to the semi-literate.
Ms Carnell’s question to Mr Berry about why the Government had not fulfilled its promise to deliver methadone to 350 clients in three government centres drew the sharp response that Ms Carnell was only interested in giving the business to private pharmacies. This resulted in a further flurry of interjections about not answering the question without a second’s silence between them to reflect upon their pertinence. Their impertinence was obvious.