The idealism is there. The Braidwood boy (youngest of 14 _ eight boys and six girls) now Deputy Chief Minister wants Canberra to retain its essential goodness.
David Lamont was installed yesterday as Deputy Chief Minister and Minister for the Three Rs _ not Education, but Urban Services, “”rates, roads and rubbish.”
Already the famous “”Yes Minister” briefs and boxes have arrived. He snatched 15 minutes between them yesterday to fulfil his open-door policy to the press.
He replaces Wayne Berry who resigned in the early hours of yesterday morning after a no-confidence motion in the Legislative Assembly, leaping straight from the backbench to the Deputy’s position. The Left is dead. Long live the Left.
The Right’s Terry Connolly was disappointed. (Doubly so now he will more to the No 3 position on the Molonglo how-to-vote card to be posted by the party to electors before the next election. Previously he had been No 2 because Berry will stand in Ginninderra. Lamont lives in the Molonglo electorate with his wife Carol and three boys aged 14, 10 and nine.)
However, the “”long live the Left” epithet is not quite accurate. Lamont prides himself on being a results person. He chaired the committee that rewrote the complex Territory Plan, and as secretary of the ACT branch of the Transport Workers Union, his members would argue he got them better conditions.
With that hamper him as Minister for buses?
“”In the TWU, I had a job to do, and I hope I did it well,” he said. “”As Minister I will have a job to do, an I hope I will do it well.”
Part of that job will be to unravel some of the conditions he won ACTION drivers while in the TWU.
Lamont did not quite put it like this, but at least he knows where the bodies are buried.
He has a passion for Canberra. He came to Canberra when he left school to join the Public Service “”as everyone did then”, in Customs and then Mapping. It gave him some of his interest in planning which helped him as chair of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee.
He got into union politics in 1975 with Australian Public Service Association and then the Transport Workers’ Union, of which he was secretary of the ACT branch from 1985 to 1991. It was his launching pad to election as an MLA in February 1992.
Lamont has a disarming ability of getting into some convoluted circumlocutions at times. He sounds sincere and active, but when you unravel the words and put them on paper you have to shake your head to work out what the words mean. He is a feeler more than a thinker.
His mother has had a great influence on him, “”not just because she was the mother of 14 children, but because of her tolerance.”
She found repugnant the bigotry towards New Australians.
So did his primary school teachers, like Barry Walters.
“”They encourage you to be yourself, and not to be ashamed to be yourself and to express yourself, to be confident in the way you express yourself . . . to grab hold of life, to experience things.”
He appreciated the chance to grow up in a small country town . . . He would like to see Canberra “”retain some of the characteristics I grew up with and experienced when I came to Canberra”.
“”I think that the essential goodness of this city is something I want to be involved in and I want to see that nourished and I want to see enhanced so that my kids and my kids’ kinds have an opportunity to experience what is one of the unique cities in the world,” he said. “”Canberra embodies those essential things that we like to think of when we talk about Australia . . . . When people go overseas and try to explain things about Australia a lot of those characteristics are embodied here in this city.”
Lamont said his job was to achieve change in a non-confrontationist way, to deliver the things people expect of government.
“”My main test is being able to deliver,” he said.