Bottom line is that you can’t trust Labor with our LGH – just more broken promises and this in the minister’s own home town!  How I wish we could have leadership at this level instead of captivity to the department.

So, at the minister’s excellent suggestion, below is what I peddled to a the hungry beast that afternoon.  Also, I have copied the uncorrected proof Hansard at the bottom of this article.  Comments welcome.

The Minister for Health, Michelle O’Byrne today confirmed her lack of commitment to the people of Bass and her inability to deliver on the promises made regarding the LGH.

During the state election campaign, Labor promised $130 million over five years to the Launceston General Hospital. Had this commitment been kept, it would have enabled the Hospital to employ approximately 260 more clinical staff.

Today the Minister argued that the Greens have compromised their ability to deliver on their election promises and then attempted to maintain that they might still fulfill its promise on staffing – but over a longer period of time and remarkably, also for less money.

The 2010-11 budget shows just $5 million has been allocated to the LGH for staffing and only $61 million has been delivered over the forward estimates – less than half of the promised $130 million.

Only Labor would have the audacity to claim that providing less than half of the funding promised is a promise kept.

Mr FERGUSON – Minister, we have four of the five members for Bass at the table, and we are all concerned about the Launceston General Hospital. In the election, good news for anybody who cares about the LGH was the Government’s commitment – your commitment – to $130 million. You committed those funds over five years, and your Government said that the funding would enable 260 extra staff for the LGH. The Premier said, in his announcement of that funding, and I quote, ‘to enable the LGH to recruit around 150 more nurses, 54 more allied health professionals and eight more medical specialists over the next two years’. Yet on page 5.4 of budget paper 2 it says that you will provide that over time. The two years is dropped – the funding is not there. In fact, less than half of the funding is there, so what is going on? Why was this promise made if you had no intention of delivering on it?

Ms O’BYRNE – We also promised that we were intending to have majority government -

Mr FERGUSON – Are you blaming the Greens?

Ms O’BYRNE – No, no. We have met 75 per cent of our commitments, and we aim to meet 100 per cent of our commitments over the life of this Government. What we have managed to deliver to the LGH -

Mr FERGUSON – $5 million.

Ms O’BYRNE – in two parts, that by the fourth year – this is $61 million over four years and $130 million over 5 years -

Mr FERGUSON – Is there going to be $70 million in the last year?

Ms O’BYRNE – By the fourth year we will be in a position to employ the 260 staff that we have identified. The area that these staff are going to work in, is still under construction. Not an awful lot of them will be knocking walls down and building walls – I think we might have some demarcation issues if we asked them to do that. Staffing levels at the LGH in 2008-09 have been increased with an extra $3 million – part year – to support increased staffing for allied health and rehabilitation services. That has now risen to $4.5 million annually. Also we would like to meet our full commitment for $130 million. What I have, and what I am honest about, is that we have $61 million over four years to enable us to recruit those doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and ancillary staff. It is $5 million for 2010-11, $10 million for 2011-12, $20 million for 2012-13 and the full annual amount of $26 million will be in place by 2013-14.

Mr FERGUSON – I can read the Budget.

Ms O’BYRNE – The progressively increased staffing levels will ensure the hospital facilities being constructed under the Australian Government and State infrastructure program at a cost of $96.8 million have increased staff as they become operational from late 2010, commencing with the acute medicine unit and to address the significant increase in emergency department activity. Our commitment will provide, by 2013-14, around 121 nursing – you might want these figures – 54 allied health professionals, eight medical specialists and approximately 50 support staff, the support staff being cleaning, technical, orderly -

Mr FERGUSON – I have all those numbers; you have just rephrased it.

Ms O’BYRNE – Yes, I realise you have the numbers but you did ask the question so I am giving you the answer.

Mr FERGUSON – But that is not the question I asked.

Ms O’BYRNE – This is in addition to around 38 nursing positions, created in December 2009 for the intensive care unit, the high dependency unit and the northern cardiac unit and these positions are currently being recruited. The northern cardiac unit commenced operation on 26 April and is a significant injection in the staffing and services at the Launceston General Hospital.

Mr BOOTH – So, is it sufficient money to run the services?

Ms O’BYRNE – At this stage we think that it will be in that it gradually brings staff on, but I am happy to work with John Kirwan and the Northern Area Health Service if there are other challenges within that time. We are looking at a gradual employment of staff. In the past, it has been quite difficult to recruit so if you wanted to recruit this amount of people you would start early. Recruitment does not seem to be as much as a challenge for us now, so we can recruit as we need them. That is something that we will monitor. If there becomes an issue with recruitment then we will work with the Northern Area Health Service to deal with it. This is what we think is a sustainable recruitment plan, and we will deliver the $26 million in the final year. A rough general benchmark for each staff position is $100 000, but it clearly alters according to positions.

Mr BOOTH – So, given the obvious change in commitment from prior to the election to now, what areas in the LGH will not be covered as quickly as they would have been under your original promise?

Ms O’BYRNE – What I am saying is that we probably would have had staff on before we needed them under the original announcement, but now we will be bringing them on line as we need them. If it turns out that the opening of the areas is such that we would need to review that then we will.

Mr FERGUSON – Could you see why a member of the public would be very disenchanted with the pre-election statement and the budget papers?

Ms O’BYRNE – Well I am not going to get into what you think somebody might like or dislike about it. I am here to be examined on the budget estimates about what we are funding. I am happy to address the issue between what we had hoped to give and what we have funded; I think I have done that.

Mr FERGUSON – You have taken me for a ride, haven’t you?

Ms O’BYRNE – Oh, Mr Ferguson, I know that you want some media but please do not be ridiculous.

Mr FERGUSON – To meet your $130 million commitment are you forecasting that in 2014-15 there will be something like $70 million?

Ms O’BYRNE – It may be that we are in a position, if it is needed, to bring additional money in the earlier years rather than the out years of the Budget. We have said that we funded 75 per cent of our commitments and we aim to fund the whole 100 per cent over the life of the Government. If there is a need and an opportunity to bring additional staff on within those facilities, if they open then, of course, we will be looking at that.

Mr FERGUSON – Of course, this is half – not even three out of four.

Ms O’BYRNE – Well, it is $26 million by the fourth year, which will fund the staff that we need for the fourth year.

I want to provide a response to this Labor-Greens Budget. It is the first such budget in a long, long time and I want to highlight some particular areas of need which I see as being unfulfilled. I want to describe in some general terms some of the thoughts and views that I have on education policy. I would also like, both from within this Chamber and outside, to invite community discussion and debate in that respect.

For any government the annual budget is its signature piece. It speaks most loudly about what you stand for and what you can do and are willing to do to fix problems that are in the community – to seize hold of opportunities that you sense and things that you wish to take advantage of. A budget will say what economic reforms are needed to help Tasmania to keep up with the rest of the world and to maintain, or even hopefully improve, our standard of living. A budget will say whether in government you will keep the promises that you made before an election. This, of course, goes to the very heart of integrity in politics because the voters of Tasmania get rare occasions to say what they think in a meaningful way and to direct government and democracy in Tasmania. These are called elections and they only come up every four years or thereabouts. That is why we as candidates and political parties and independents will go out into the political marketplace and we will sell our wares. We will say to people, ‘If you vote for me, this is what I stand for and this is what I would seek to do.’ Party leaders take it to a new level. They speak on behalf of all their team, whether it is the Liberal team, or team Bartlett or the Nick McKim Dream Greens team. You will say, ‘If you elect us to government these are not just the values and the ideas that we would strive for; this is what we will do.’ These are the action statements. Value statements are very important as I think everybody in this room will agree. I can say that confidently without wanting to overdo it. There are many people of genuine goodwill. It is one of the best things that I have observed coming into this place and I think that is excellent.

Values are very important but when people have these rare occasions to vote at an election not everyone, but almost everyone in the community, really values the opportunity to vote a government in or out. Sometimes they even enjoy it because they think, ‘Maybe I have just had enough of this lot. I want them out.’ Or, ‘I really think these guys are great and I want to get them in.’ Or, ‘This government is so good I would like to see them continue on.’

Put yourself in the shoes of somebody who has a particular important need in their family, such as an educational need or a young person or child in their family with a disability who is not getting the support that they need to reach their potential, or someone in their family or a friend who is sick – they will be a highly motivated voter. In my inaugural speech, I spoke about a group of people who were fearful for their jobs and saw the election as their only chance to speak up.

This Budget tells me Labor believes that near enough is good enough or, if I may mangle an old song, that ‘three out of four ain’t bad’. I am old enough to remember that song, but mostly from the repeats on the radio. Anything goes, so long as it keeps you in power. The lesson for anybody in the community who wants to pay attention to happenings in Parliament this week and last week, is that the new rule for Tasmanian politics is this: it is okay to offer the world, it is okay to have a long list of promises and make them, ‘hand on heart’ to the voters, then, after the election, to change your language and to change what you said, and to boast, as the Treasurer did last Thursday night, that, ‘We have achieved meeting three out of four of our commitments. I think that is undignified, and pretty unfortunate.

How can it be that a government which is clearly in possession of every bit of Treasury advice – advice which is routinely denied to those who are not members of the Cabinet or a part of the Government – and also in possession and control of internal government information as to the state of the finances, would dare to make all sorts of promises to do this, to achieve that, to build that, to spend there, to invest in this infrastructure, only to say, just weeks later, that they will reassess everything?

This morning, the Minister for Resources said, ‘We want to work in consultation or collaboration with local government’, and, ‘We are absolutely keen to see this issue resolved in the long term’ – we are talking about the silt in the Tamar River. That is the sort of thing you normally say before an election. Now, I guess you are stuck with it – you are the minister. You did not make the promise, Minister, but you are landed with it now. The Government told the people of northern Tasmania that something would be done about the silt in the Tamar – there was a promise to spend more than $6 million addressing the issue. I accept that it might not be as straightforward a problem as you would like it to be, but there is nothing in the budget for the Tamar.

Mr Green – There’s $1.4 million in this Budget.

Mr FERGUSON – I accept your correction on that point – the maintenance dredging funds are there – but there is nothing in the Budget to address what was promised. Before the election, many of us, including myself, were frankly gobsmacked at the Premier’s spending spree, before the caretaker mode came into effect. A friend of mine – a Navy war veteran – sent me quite a funny e-mail. It referred to the spending by the Federal Government, but also alluded to our Premier’s spending. The e-mail said, ‘It is not really fair’ – bearing in mind he was an ex-Navy man – ‘to refer to the Labor Party as spending like drunken sailors’. He said that, unlike Labor, when he was a drunken sailor, when he ran out of money, he stopped spending it! But this Government kept spending. We had a pre-election spending spree and then we had a pre-election promises spree. Clearly the Government was so fearful of losing government – and the polls certainly pointed to this – that it decided to risk it all on the basis that if the spending actually paid off and got them back into government, it would be worth it, and that if it did not do the job, then it would probably become a problem for the Liberal Party. It would be someone else’s problem to have to mop up afterwards; that is certainly what people in the community are telling me.

When you consider the Labor members in this House, I would suspect that all 10 out of 10 of our Labor members would say, ‘Great Budget’. They would probably even say, ‘Out of a score of 10 I will give it 10 points’. It may not be quite the case that the 15 members that make up the Labor-Greens coalition would all agree exactly in that way, but how could 10 out of 10 give 10 out of 10 points to a budget that delivers three out of four of your promises. I think the public will be very concerned about this. If anybody wanted to make a comparison with a former Federal government that came to power and used words such as ‘core’ and ‘non-core promises’, I would say that is a fair enough point to make and I would probably expect to hear it. In response I would say, ‘Look at the context. An opposition was coming into government and found that the finances were not as they were presented to be’, which then in later years saw the introduction of the Charter of Budget Honesty. However, in the recent election we saw a government holding onto power knowing exactly the state of the finances. No wonder our Leader, Will Hodgman, would today address this House and criticise the Labor Party for the way it has abandoned its principles before the election.

If anyone wants to make the claim that this Budget is responsible, then that is fair enough too. It probably is a responsible budget in the broad and in context, but the community will be looking at this document and taking a different view. They will say, ‘We were given a set of promises, whether it was health or education or our local roads’. I know that the people of the north-east will be wondering, ‘How is the Tasman Highway going?’, because it did not make it into the Budget although it did make it into the pre-election spending promises.

Our budget response this year demonstrates that were we in government now – and we are not; I am not bellyaching about that, but it is an important principle to make – not three-quarters of our promises would have been funded and delivered; it would have been four quarters. Together with that, there would have been a better budget bottom line.

Mr Best – There’s no detail.

Mr FERGUSON – I will send you the e-mail later on. It was released today at two o’clock.

I am very pleased with many aspects of the Budget that concern education. I am not going to stand here today and be negative about everything; nobody is all bad, just as none of us is all good. There are some exceptions that I will explore but today I will choose mainly to select the positive aspects and indicate our support for them. Much of what the Government is seeking to do in this Budget is praiseworthy and I have no problem saying so. I am pleased that the education budget appears to have been largely maintained from last year, although a large proportion of the Budget is clearly a passing on of Federal funds as part of the BER, so some analysis is needed before we dismiss entirely the possibility that recurrent investment in education, particularly at the school level, is entirely stable. I know that my colleague, the shadow treasurer, said that in 2009-10 education is expected to received $1.384 billion in total funding from the Consolidated Fund, whereas in 2010-11 education will receive $1.34 billion, which represents a cut of $44 million.

There is some evidence, though, that the education budget has shrunk by tens of millions of dollars, with no provision at all for expected cost increases to the agency. In particular, I draw your attention to this question: has the Government made any special provision for extra costs arising out of payment of SEO availability allowances, which has been reported in the news, and very importantly the upcoming round of negotiations with the union regarding teachers’ salaries. If indeed a nexus is achieved again, there seems little scope in this Budget to meet the additional costs that would then arise. That is a question I would flag today as important. If a salary nexus is achieved and the Government needs to outlay more funds, then I would be very concerned if they are somehow expected to come from within existing budgets.

I have no problem with, in fact I pay tribute to the Government for the Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap initiative. It is a good initiative. It may not succeed entirely in everything that it seeks to do. Very few government programs ever do, but I appreciate the initiative. I note that the Government, again, over-promised before the election. In document after document I kept seeing $12 million -

Mr O’Byrne – Over-promised – we’re the only ones, you reckon?

Mr FERGUSON – There you go again; you have just walked in and you are going to be like that again. Well, you have missed much of what I had to say which was -

Mr O’Byrne – I have been watching on television.

Mr FERGUSON – I am glad you made it. You missed much of what I said, which was in fact pointing out that there is plenty in the Budget that I have no difficulty supporting. If you do not mind my saying, I have no problem standing here today and saying so, which I am not sure would have been the case were our roles reversed. However, when you make a promise and you drain them of their vote to get into power then you should deliver what you promise. You really should and that is something you should not disagree with. Instead in this Budget we have $10 million. I support the initiative and I will be seeking assurances from the minister that the funds will be wisely and carefully used so that we can get the best value from what are obviously the available funds. It is $10 million over four years and unfortunately just 10 per cent of that is in the coming financial year. The whole initiative was to extend the program into high schools as well. I support it because this does hold the possibility that we can lift the fortunes of the lowest achieving students in our lowest performing communities.

We need to be careful how we measure the performance. As policy-makers we need to be careful that it is not absolute individual results of students and school communities that matter the most. The performance that matters most to me is the difference that education has made to a child or to a school community over a period. We would like to see that become a mainstream part of our rhetoric here in politics. It is certainly the case that the relationship between SES and school achievement is a strong one. I would ask the question: which one causes the other? It is probably the case that they are one and the same statistic. Each one is causing the other and, in fact, having a reinforcing effect. We do have to do better. I have been briefed on this aspect of our statewide performance and the statistics are quite sobering. You recognise that for many young people who have been raised in a particular social environment it really is not on that they should have their life chances predetermined. It should not be on the basis of the way in which they have come into the world and the community they happen to live in. That is why I support this initiative, but it will come with some accountability. For the Government and the Opposition there is a great role here for backbenchers because it is very important that we keep our departments’ pencils sharp and we ask them, ‘Well, what are you actually doing with these funds because do not expect to come back for more money in the future if you have not delivered on what you promised in the first place’.

The A-Team has been such a small aspect to departmental budgets but it has occupied a lot of our time in this place, out of this place, in the media and certainly in the parent community. I think that is interesting, partly because it demonstrates the great value of this very small pilot program and the benefits it brought to the community and the families involved. I will not rehearse it all again, but I did speak in this place on the adjournment last week and I raised some fears. Sadly, here I go again, I shot my mouth off and congratulated the minister, only to find later on that things were not as they had been put across. I am pretty disappointed by that, I have to say. I feel, until the information I have asked for is forthcoming, as if I have been conned. Even as it was, when I looked at the budget papers it looked like $100 000 because it said 0.1. In fact, on further investigation just $85 000 was allocated to the A-Team – as if that is going to keep it going. Weirdly, it was from the Health and Human Services budget, so I am not sure what is going on there, as it is an Education department program and at $85 000 it is just 7 per cent.

Ms O’Connor – It relates to children with disabilities.

Mr FERGUSON – That is great, but the A-Team program arose from Learning Services North and is being migrated into Distance Education Tasmania, so although I have no problem where the money comes from -

Ms O’Connor – We administer autism services in Tasmania through the Department of Human Services, so you don’t want a silo -

Mr FERGUSON – Yes, Minister, I take the interjection; I have no problem with where the money comes from or where it is appropriated, but it is just 7 per cent of what we all agreed was needed. So when I raised this publicly -

Ms O’Connor – I’d say it’s a work in progress.

Mr FERGUSON – I hope it is, I really do, because as I was saying, it is just 7 per cent of what we all agreed was needed. I believe the Greens matched the Liberals’ costing and promise of $1.3 million – correct me if I am wrong. When I raised this publicly, the minister shot back a response and said that future funding is secure in Distance Education’s budget, so I would just like to say, ‘Show me the money’.

Ms O’Connor – We did get an extra $1 million into autism specialist services in Tasmania.

Mr FERGUSON – Yes, that is a separate issue. Show me the money. There is just no sign in the Budget, and if you want -

Ms O’Connor – I showed you the money.

Mr FERGUSON – If the minister wants to shut me up, just tell us what page it is on, but at this point in time I can assure you and this House, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the autism community are pretty concerned about where it is going. Last week I paid tribute to the efforts of my colleague, Mr Booth, and I just feel as though we have been dudded. These are unanswered questions.

Mr Booth – If we have, that will be resolved on the Floor.

Mr FERGUSON – Excellent. Let us see about that; we are not the Government, we are not able to bring money bills.

Mr Booth – It is a hung parliament, though.

Mr FERGUSON – Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to make a comment on the Cosgrove High School specialist sport school for sports. An amount of $18 million was allocated. I do not want to sound as if I am opposing the initiative because I am not, but I have a few concerns about this. I really do wonder at the decision-making that went behind this commitment. It is even bigger than the cost of building a whole new school at Port Sorell, so it is quite perplexing.

I am told by the community that no-one was more surprised at the time of that announcement than the school community itself. They had not asked for it and it was not a priority. As a Liberal I am very enthusiastic about the idea of schools taking on specialist niche areas. I think that is excellent and there should be more of it, but this particular example just does not show the kind of evidence that the Premier often speaks about when he says that he wants evidence-based approaches, so we will be watching that one very closely.

With regard to the pathway planners, I am not seeing any evidence of progress here. The Liberals have taken a strong position on this and prior to the election we made commitments to support up to 35 new pathway planners in our schools and colleges, which has provided and could in future provide great career and vocational learning pathways advice and support to our students. As to the provision of psychologists and speech therapists, I think that was finally something that my predecessor, Mrs Napier, the Greens and the Labor Party came to some common ground on, so it is great to see that in the Budget again. We do want to see the benefits. Previously I have said, ‘Show me the money’; in this case you have shown me the money, so show me the benefits and let us see how these resources can be carefully and wisely used.

I made a comment already earlier about the SEO availability allowance. There is nothing in this Budget to specifically deal with this potential problem. That is not a criticism but an observation, given that it goes back for apparently 30 years and has only recently been picked up, so it is quite an astonishing bit of history for all of us to have learned. If people have believed that they are entitled to a payment and they have been underpaid I just want to say that the claim should be properly tested and if found owing should be paid, but not at the expense of any school budget. That is why on the day, if there is a day coming where the minister will say that there has been some allocation made, I would like to ensure that that is made at the same time as a new appropriation or some reasonable saving somewhere else in government.

On Tasmania Tomorrow, I do not have a lot of time to comment, but what a lot of rubbish I have heard, particularly over the last few weeks from the Tasmanian Greens, including today’s restatement that their policy has not changed. I find that astonishing. The Tasmanian Greens and the Liberals went to the last election with policies which differed specifically with regard to whether or not to restore the old TAFE. Apart from that, our policies were very close. The Labor Party was being very stubborn on this point and refused to give ground. We went to the election and at the earliest opportunity the Tasmanian Liberals tabled a bill. I met with Mr O’Halloran, the member for Braddon, on 11 May to brief him on the bill and in that meeting Mr O’Halloran asked me a range of questions, including the status of former TAFE students, teachers and courses that had been migrated to the Polytechnic.

I expressed to him then that, although we favoured this being handled by the Skills Institute, I was quite open-minded on that point and would welcome further discussions with him. On the day that I tabled the bill in this place, I issued a media release inviting the Greens and the Government and, indeed, the community to provide feedback on any shortcomings that they saw in the bill or improvements that they felt they could make. Strangely, I found with the benefit of hindsight, that I never heard back from Mr O’Halloran. I never received any comment, feedback or suggestions and it was quite clear, looking back now, that it was all a bit of a ruse and that the deal was to work with the Government. That is fine, but now we are interested in the future.

I am quite concerned now that we have lost so much time with regard to implementing the changes that need to occur, and implementation is the key issue. I know the Greens have made an important point, and I would have to agree, that the implementation is very important, but the implementation plan ought to have been constructed at the same time as the negotiations between the Greens and the Government with regard to the changes that were agreed upon. So that is my concern. I am concerned about lost time. I am concerned that now we have only six months before the start of the 2011 school and college year and I am pretty worried about that. I want to play a constructive role if I can but I suspect I will not because the opportunity will not be there. Nonetheless, that is the responsibility of the Government and given that today the minister outlined the role of the task force and I think she mentioned something like 14 or 15 parties that are part of that taskforce, including a number of boards, they will have to hire a convention centre for their first meeting. So they are some of my concerns right up-front and the Labor-Greens Government, not just the minister, will have to be accountable on that particular point.

With regard to my electorate of Bass, it is great to see some extra money for palliative care. I have been banging on about this for a long time and I have also been a member of the Northern Hospice and Palliative Care Support Group. We need to make sure that this extra money is used for real publicly-funded beds that we can see, not hidden in the acute or sub-acute system. With regard to the LGH funding in general, during the election Labor committed $130 million over five years for around 260 more staff for the LGH. That is fantastic, but in this Budget in the coming financial year there is just $5 million that will be spent on staff and less than half of the proposed $130 million has been delivered. This morning or earlier this afternoon the minister said that the Budget ‘makes a start in fulfilling this commitment’, which I find really dissatisfying.

Madam Deputy Speaker, there are many issues that we can go into and they are all important to all of us. My response today touches on just a few of them. I do want to say today that, in my role as shadow minister for education and skills, I am really delighted to be able to play a useful role in this area. It is something I feel very strongly about as part of Tasmania’s future. I know that is a point that there is no disagreement on in this place. I want to see improved educational outcomes at school. I want to see better retention of all our college leavers, wherever they go to college. I want to see better support for special needs students and I want to explore the role of specialist schools and to work with the community in seeing if we can come up with a better way to support students who have a disability. I want to pursue greater autonomy and more accountability for teacher performance and I want to pursue student development. We need excellence in our schools. We need to allow specialisation to take place and we need to give schools a level of trust that comes with a level of obligation back to the taxpayer.

With those thoughts I indicate that I will be raising many of these issues during the Estimates process and look forward hopefully to being assured on many of those matters and raising issues of concern if need be.

While driving, I listened to the live broadcast of the caretaker Premier Bartlett breathing his pathetic attempt to argue that somehow Will Hodgman had “failed to form a government” despite Labor’s supposed best efforts to facilitate the change.

Lie.

The truth is that two things happened in the last two days that have led to Labor exending their 12 year rule on power to 16 years – and both illustrate the desperate measures that dishonourable parties have been willing to take in order to cling to power that the voting public denied:

• Labor reneged on its undertaking to genuinely support a Liberal minority government by failing to give the promised and needed undertakings when they were sought. 
• Greens decide to support the Labor government that for the last few years they have described as corrupt, incompetent and dishonest.  McKim has shape-shifted.  This is a significant change and one which will rightly lead many Tasmanians to feel that their vote has been utterly abused and misappropriated.

These two dishonourable acts are an ugly stain on Tasmanian politics. 

The Liberals regard this Labor/Green government as illegitimate and we will move a vote of no confidence from the floor of the House of Assembly at the earliest opportunity.

I am certainly not concerned personally about being in opposition.  Being elected to the Tasmanian Parliament with such a strong show of support from the people of Bass is a massive honour.

But I am devastated for Tasmanians – knowing that their hopes for a better future and a government they can be proud of have been utterly dashed.

From here we continue to stay close to everyday Tasmanians, to focus on our current and future needs, to shine the bright light of scrutiny on the desperate Labor/Green government and to stay focussed on winning a Liberal Government at the next opportunity.

Please stay with us.  Your support is needed more than ever.

If you are not a member of the Liberal Party but would like to be, then now is the time to get motivated -  please contact me and allow me to introduce you asap.

I have been contacted by several parents of WPS students who are angry at the way the merger has been promoted and so-called ‘ballots’ counted.

Clearly, counting unreturned ballots as a ‘yes’ vote is a rort.

This lack of integrity in the process is compounded by:

• The poor communication with parents regarding the information session and confusion regarding the date of that session.
• The fact that people who reside in Waverley and have an affinity with the school but do not currently have students enrolled were excluded from the consultation which did take place.
• The fact that the neither the school, the department nor the minister released the results of the ballot, or even the level of participation.

As a result of these concerns I conducted an independent and voluntary survey of the community, which showed the following results:

Question 1 – Parents of WPS students only

Did you complete and return the survey form issued by the school which asked if you were in favour of a merger with St Leonards Primary School?

• No, I don’t remember receiving this (32%)
• No, I did receive it but didn’t return it (10%)
• Yes, I voted in support of the merger (0%)
• Yes, I voted against the merger (57%)

Number of parent responses: 40

Question 2.

Do you believe that parents who did not return a survey should have been counted as a “Yes” vote by the State Government?

• Yes (0%)
• No (95%)
• Undecided (5%)

Number of responses: 57

Question 3.

How do you feel about the plan for Waverley students attending WPS from K to Gr2 and then moving to the St Leonards campus for Gr3 to Gr6?

• Satisfied (0%)
• Dissatisfied (98%)
• Undecided (2%)

Number of responses: 57

As a result of these survey results I will be proceeding with discussions with both parent representatives and the Tasmanian Liberal leader Will Hodgman regarding an appropriate way forward for Waverley children which in my mind must include the possibility of running a proper and robust community consultation.

Earlier this year the Government announced it would try and save money without affecting frontline services.  But it looks like the Government’s priorities are to save itself and abandon some of the services that Tasmanians rely on, breaking its promise to Tasmanians to save frontline services from budget cuts.

Last week we found out that the Government was withdrawing support for Lifeline’s victims of crime counselling services in the south and north-west of the State.

Yesterday the Tasmanian Liberals revealed that as many as 80 jobs would be cut at the Royal Hobart Hospital, increasing the workload on the remaining staff and putting an already stretched health system under even more pressure.

Today we see that the Government now has the Royal Flying Doctor Service in its sights. In 2007-08, the Flying Doctors helped 1,654 patients.

Targetting essential services, such as the Flying Doctors, to make savings is absolute madness. Relocating the service to Hobart would also be a mistake. Launceston is the more effective base, because it minimises travel times to the Bass Strait Islands and for transferring patients to Melbourne.

These three examples show that this Government is incapable of making the right decisions. The place to start making savings is in the army of ministerial advisers and spin doctors.

It shows that this Government has warped priorities when it would rather cut funding to Lifeline or the Royal Flying Doctors rather than non-essential services.

Before the Government starts hacking away at vital community services, we need to know if the savings measures in other areas are being made. For example, what cuts have the Premier and Treasurer made to their own budgets, or are they expecting Tasmanians to bear the brunt of the pain while maintaining their own empires?

I have long been concerned that this Government was so focused on short-term politics and looking after itself rather than the long-term interests of Tasmanians.

It is a great honour to be back at the University of Western Australia and a special privilege to deliver this Menzies Lecture.

I do so with the double enthusiasm of my admiration for the person after whom the Lecture is named, as well as my energetic commitment to preventing Australia going down the misguided path of embracing a Bill of Rights in the totally false belief that such action would expand our individual liberties.

Robert Gordon Menzies was a particularly accomplished lawyer, a superbly effective political leader and passionate Australian nationalist.

Menzies not only founded the most successful political party Australia has yet seen, but like the colossus Shakespeare envisioned in Julius Caesar he bestrode the political stage of his time in a quite remarkable fashion.

Every political party owes it to itself, constantly, to weave a narrative of its ongoing contribution to the life of our nation.

Narratives are important to the ongoing strength of a political movement. In good political times they instruct the decisions of governments. They reinforce the judgement of the people who elected those governments. In difficult times they provide anchorage for party members and supporters seeking to reconnect effectively with the electorate.

The story of what a political party stands for, and the values it holds dear, is never dull or unwelcome in the electorate.

Robert Menzies is central to the Liberal Party narrative. He founded our party, through a great determination to bring together the disparate non-Labor forces of the time.

He set it on a course which would ensure that it would be the custodian of two great traditions in Australia politics: the conservative tradition as well as the classical liberal one. Menzies founded a broad church, imbued with a spirit to change and reform, where old ways were holding back Australia, yet determined to preserve and defend those values and institutions of timeless worth to our society.

His is a legacy well worth both defending and extolling. That legacy exists in every area of public policy.

We are here tonight at the University of Western Australia. We frequently hear from the present government about what passes as an education revolution. I am reminded of the extraordinary additions to the benefits of higher education inaugurated by the Menzies Government in the late 1950s. They laid the foundation stones of the modern university system in Australia.

Again, it was the Menzies Government, in 1963, which ended one hundred years of discrimination against independent, largely Catholic, schools, with the first policy bringing direct Commonwealth aid to those schools.

More than forty years on, Australia now has a plural and competitive primary and secondary education system, the envy of most other nations.

Those great myth makers, our opponents in the Labor Party, never tire of their audacious and persistent attempts to denigrate the contribution of Menzies to the growth and development of modern Australia.

The Labor caricatures of Menzies have been many, but two have been especially prominent; that he was British to his boot heels, sometimes to the detriment of Australian interests; and that he was indifferent to the importance of Asia to Australia’s future.

He had rightly imbibed and held fast to those elements of our British inheritance of ageless value: parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, individual freedom, a robust and free press and, of course, the treasure of the English language and its literature. This reinforced rather than diminished his Australian nationalism. He never shirked from vigorously asserting Australian interests, even where they did not coincide with those of the United Kingdom.

It was his government which negotiated the ANZUS Treaty, our most important security alliance. There was plenty of British pique, at the time, at the implications of the United Kingdom not being included in the pact.

The then Labor Leader, Dr H V Evatt, criticised the Treaty for not including the United Kingdom. The reality was that the Treaty would not have been concluded if Australia had insisted on the inclusion of Great Britain.

Those who believe that Paul Keating discovered the importance of Australia’s trading links with Asia my be surprised to know that, as long ago as 1936, Menzies showed alarm at the impact which trade arrangements between British textile interests and Australia might have on our trade with Japan.

Moreover, it was of course the historic Commerce Agreement with Japan in 1957 driven by Menzies’ Deputy Prime Minister, John McEwen, which laid the foundation of the priceless trading partnership between this country and Japan. The latter has been the most enduring and valuable customer Australia has had since World War II.

From time to time, during internal Liberal Party debates on broadly philosophical issues, the name of Menzies, often in vain, will be invoked in support of one or other side of the argument.

Tonight we can be certain of one thing, however. If Menzies were still with us he would most assuredly be passionately opposed to a Bill of Rights for Australia.

It would have been against the instinct of every bone in his common law body. Moreover, it would impinge on his deep reverence for parliament.

His words, contributed in a newspaper article in the early 1970s, demonstrated very clearly his profound scepticism for the sort of approach now in contemplation by some Australians.

Menzies was responding both to a bill introduced by the then Labor Attorney-General, the late Senator Lionel Murphy, to implement an international covenant on civil and political rights, as well as a statement by Senator Murphy that he supported an amendment to the Australian Constitution to give effect to that covenant; in other words, to import an American style Bill of Rights into the Constitution of the Commonwealth.

Menzies made two observations directly relevant to the contemporary debate. He reminded his readers that in Australia it was necessary to remember, when discussing civil and political rights, that one of the functions of the common law had been to protect the individual against infringement of his personal rights.

He wrote, “in the result I may proceed along my path in life knowing that my rights to think and to speak are recognised, that the rights of myself and other people to be protected against defamation are recognised, that my rights to be at peace in my own house are recognised … Indeed, one could write a long essay on the value of the common law and its supreme function in protecting the rights of the individual”.

With those words Sir Robert Menzies delivered a proper rebuke to the proponents of a Bill of Rights, who frequently imply that the whole area of individual rights is a void without some statutory enunciation of those rights.

Our Party’s founder also wrote, “…that the best guarantee of human rights in the future is to be found in our system of responsible government, where Ministers sit in Parliament, can be questioned, and give answers, and the government itself may be turned out if parliament feels that it is doing things which violate the proper rights of individuals.”

Those are surely sentiments that all Liberals and many others would readily endorse.

The essence of my objection to a Bill of Rights is that, contrary to its very description, it reduces the rights of citizens to determine matters over which they should continue to exercise control. It does this by transferring decision making authority to unelected judges, accountable to no one except in the barest theoretical sense.

I had always thought that a member of parliament was a decision maker and not a buck-passer. I have always held to the classical view that the public elects members of parliament who pass laws, hopefully in the public interest, and those laws are in turn interpreted and enforced by the courts. That sentiment is at the heart of my objection to a Bill of Rights.

A Bill of Rights would further diminish the prestige of parliament; it would politicise the appointment of judges; it would increase the volume of litigation and it would not increase the rights and protections now available to Australian citizens.

In the Australian context the adoption of a Charter or Bill of rights would represent the final triumph of elitism in Australian politics – the notion that typical citizens, elected by ordinary Australians, cannot be trusted to resolve great issues of public policy, and that the really important decisions should be taken out of their hands and given to judges who, after all, have a superior capacity to determine these matters.

Australia has been well served by its judiciary. At various times since Federation, the High Court of Australia has rightly deserved the description of the best judiciary in the common law world.

Overwhelmingly Australian judges have never been tainted by corruption. As a group they enjoy an enviable reputation of personal integrity.

None of that esteem, however, means that judges bring superior moral values or judgements to given situations than other citizens. Our legal system itself has always reserved a crucial role for the average citizen. We cling to the jury system to determine criminal guilt or innocence. This is because we believe that twelve good men and women and true are more likely than any others to bring a commonsense judgement to a given set of facts.

I also reject a Bill of Rights framework because it elevates rights to the detriment of responsibilities. In a truly liberal and civil society we always need to balance the enjoyment of rights with the acceptance of responsibilities.

Shortly after the 2007 Presidential election I listened to a radio interview with a Baptist Pastor in the United States.

He said that the soon to be inaugurated President would be the 44th President of the United States, yet Mr Justice John Roberts, currently Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was only the 17th Chief Justice. Make no mistake, the Pastor’s comparison was a complaint. He did not like the idea that judges remained in office for so long, particularly when compared to the people for whom he was allowed to vote.

He had good reason for this. Many decisions which have far reaching social and political consequences in the United States are made by judges; in Australia those same decisions are made by parliaments, elected by the people.

Australia and the United States are both great democracies – but they are democracies of a very different kind. My years in Australian politics, and most particularly my almost twelve years as Prime Minister, brought me into frequent contact with many levels of American life, especially its political life.

I had ample opportunity to observe, at very close quarters, its system of government. I much admire the United States and believe that it remains a powerful force for good in the world. We would be mistaken, however, to believe that the “Bill of Rights” type of democracy or indeed the presidential system of government is superior to ours.

I don’t assert that ours is always better. Rather I assert that it is different; it works well, has stood the test of time and should not be changed in the mistaken belief that something akin to the American approach would be superior. It would not and would seriously impair the Australian democracy we have grown used to.

The concept of a Bill of Rights has superficial appeal. It is the classic motherhood statement. As Professor James Allan of the University of Queensland, an avowed opponent of a Bill of Rights, has rhetorically asked; who could be against free speech? Who could be against freedom of expression, or against freedom of religion?

It all sounds so beguiling. Compile a list of fundamental rights on which we would all find ready agreement, entrench them in the constitution and live in harmony ever afterwards.

It is not anywhere near as simple as that.

We might all agree that freedom of speech, or freedom of religion are unarguably fundamental rights. The problem is that we won’t all agree on what, in every case, constitutes freedom of speech or freedom of religion.

At present, the Government of Victoria appears to have established a laboratory of human rights in which all sorts of tests are being conducted. We have the Victorian Charter of Rights, a sort of poor man’s Bill of Rights. It states that a person has a right to join a trade union. Strangely though, it does not also say that the same person has a right not to join a trade union.

We now, also, have a discussion paper with proposals to deny the current right of religious schools to discriminate in their employment practices, to the extent necessary to ensure that the ethos and values of those schools are fully promoted by staff.

Those supporting these proposals argue that the existing situation can discriminate against the individual freedoms of some employees. In response, others claim that the changes in contemplation would undermine the freedom of those running the schools to reinforce the values and traditions of individual faiths and denominations.

Quite apart from the merits involved in the debate, this example highlights how problematic it is to reach agreement on what constitutes such things as freedom of speech or freedom of religion.

For my part, it is hard to see these Victorian proposals as being other than directed specifically against religious schools. Perhaps to prove me wrong, the proponents in question might really expand their ambitions so as to allow a quota of climate change sceptics to be employed by the Australian Conservation Foundation or indeed a few members of the H R Nicholls Society to join the payroll of the ACTU. Then we would find out who is really being pluralistic.

The issue is where the lines are drawn and by whom. We might all agree that certain rights are fundamental but disagree profoundly where, for example, free speech ends and defamation begins. That must depend on the circumstances of each individual case. To me it is inconceivable that a Bill of Rights can provide a generic formula to resolve such clashes more effectively than they are at present.

Rights conflict, and to those who believe that it is possible to establish a list of absolute rights I might remind them of Jeremy Bentham’s famous remark that such a proposition was “rhetorical nonsense – nonsense upon stilts”.

The Northern Territory intervention, launched by the Howard Government in 2007 involved, amongst other things, a clear clash of rights. There were the rights protected under the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. By contrast there were the rights of the innocent indigenous children of the Northern Territory to be protected from appalling abuse.

Faced with that conflict of rights my government made a clear choice. It legislated to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act, to the extent necessary, that the measures to support the intervention, and thus protect indigenous children, could take effect. It was the view of the government that the rights of the children should be given far greater weight than any other rights which might be involved.

Not only was the government’s decision the right one, it was also right that the government, accountable to parliament and elected by the people, should have the unfettered power to make that decision. How wrong we would have been for that decision to have been out of the reach of the parliament and left to judges to determine. Yet if Australia had had a Bill of Rights that could easily have been the case.

In determining which rights should take precedence the parliament, in good faith, had to reflect as best it could the values of the Australian community. It can scarcely be argued that a small group of judges would have been better qualified than the parliament itself to make this decision.

What was required was a judgement about the nation’s priorities. Was a general, and somewhat abstract concern, about some of the rights available under the Racial Discrimination Act, more important than the urgent need to protect vulnerable children?

The answer was pretty obvious, and the people best qualified to make that judgement were surely the elected representatives of the Australian community.

Analysing rights frequently involves the application of moral judgements. There is nothing in my public life which suggests that judges, worthy and incorruptible as they have been, have more moral insights than individuals in the broader community or their elected representatives.

I think that we would all agree that the right of free political expression and activity is about as fundamental to our kind of democratic society as can be imagined.

Paradoxically, more than fifty years ago Australia witnessed the operation of the protections we continue to have for free political expression to work their way through, and in a manner that undoubtedly displeased the man we honour tonight.

I refer of course to the various attempts of the Menzies Government in the early 1950s to ban the Communist Party of Australia.

The Communist Party Dissolution Act, passed by the Australian parliament and resting largely on the defence power in the Commonwealth Constitution, was challenged in the High Court and declared invalid on the grounds that it was ultra vires the Constitution. The Court so held by a majority of six to one.

Not to be denied, Menzies then sought, via a referendum of the people, approval to alter the Constitution so as to bring the proposal to outlaw the Communist Party within its reach. Like most referenda in Australia’s history, that one failed to muster the necessary support. The Communist Party of Australia remained legal, ultimately withering on the vine through lack of public support.

I don’t seek to revisit the merits of what the then Prime Minister sought to do. Rather I draw on that experience to make the point that a practical mechanism existed under our Constitution to deal with a basic free speech issue. We did not need a Bill of Rights. The ultimate decision was made by the Australian people, who presumably judged that the undesirability of prohibiting a political movement was greater than the evil which that movement posed to Australia’s way of life.

This case also illustrated that the very existence of the Federation in Australia is itself a valuable safeguard. It divides power and one of the major functions of the High Court is to ensure that in exercising its powers the Commonwealth Parliament does not exceed its constitutional remit.

I have long argued that the three great guarantees of Australian democracy are a robust parliamentary system, an independent and incorruptible judiciary and a free and sceptical press. I have frequently described these guarantees as the real title deeds of Australian democracy.

Our parliamentary system has many flaws but ultimately it sets the tone of national debate and ought to be the ultimate decision maker because it is the identifiable and collective representation of public opinion.

For as long as I was in parliament, and I am sure it will continue, there was a periodic concern about a perceived decline in the public’s respect for the institution of parliament.

The explanations were many and varied. Politicians were only interested in themselves; they misbehaved at question time; they were too partisan; there were too many professional politicians with a diminishing number having had real life experience in business, genuine community or public service, a profession or a trade.

Members of parliament, understandably, were sensitive to these criticisms. I continue to think that many, but not all of them, were unfair and unjustified. Most people who enter parliament do have a sense of vocation, and want to leave Australia a better place when they depart the scene.

If members of parliament, throughout Australia, want the institution to which they belong to retain current levels of respect then they should resolve, from this day forward, not to surrender to others power to make the decisions which they have been entrusted to make by their fellow citizens.

This plea of mine is central to my distaste for the notion of a Bill of Rights. If adopted it must further weaken the role of parliament and therefore, in a very basic way, the quality of our democracy.

During my time as Prime Minister I railed against proposals from Ministers which involved transferring ministerial decision making to statutory authorities.

I never ceased to be amazed when I heard the argument that it would be a good idea for a non-elected official to take a decision, rather than the Minister, because then it would be removed from political influence. The reductio ad absurdum of that would of course been the progressive transfer of as many decision making roles as possible to officials. It would certainly reduce political influence, but it would also reduce democracy in the process.

I strongly believe that ministers and parliamentarians should take all of the controversial decisions. They should take them transparently and, naturally, they should be fully accountable for them.

In many cases the real reason why some parliamentarians wish to hand decision making to independent statutory authorities is to escape the opprobrium of unpopular decisions. Nothing could be more self-defeating. The more that ministers and parliaments are seen to avoid responsibility (except of course when something popular has been done), the greater will be the level of indifference, or even hostility, to our parliamentary institutions.

My experience has been that Australians bring earthy commonsense to their appreciation of political decisions. They will support unpopular decisions if the government of the day clearly establishes that there is a public benefit to be gained from the decision, and that the impact of the decision is fairly spread through the community.

As someone no longer in Parliament, but who continues to love the institution and is pained from time to time by its constant denigration by some in the community, let me issue a challenge to all those men and women now in parliament.

If you really want respect for parliament maintained or, hopefully, even increased, don’t hand over any further decision making authority to others. You were elected to make decisions, and you should not shirk that decision making responsibility by transferring it to others. Stop saying, in effect, to the world that you can’t be trusted to take difficult decisions.

Today’s members of parliament should be assured that every time parliament hands over power to a non-elected body, the views of the sceptics that parliament is composed essentially of unworthy people is bolstered.

The late Sir Harry Gibbs, a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, crystallised the issue when he said “if society is tolerant and rational it does not need a Bill of Rights. If it is not, no Bill of Rights will preserve it”.

Gibbs was absolutely right. In the end it is the customs, attitudes and culture of a people, as expressed through their institutions, which determine the strength of their commitment to democratic values. History is full of constitutions with high sounding definitions of liberty and equality which have proved worthless in the face of political tyranny.

The constitutions of the former Soviet Union and the pre-Hitler Weimar Republic in Germany had many fine phrases. Even Nazi Germany had a Bill of Rights guaranteeing the “dignified existence of all people”. More recently, the Zimbabwean constitution contains a Bill of Rights that promises extensive human rights protection for citizens of that country.

In his excellent contribution to the Menzies Research Centre booklet, a former Justice of the High Court, Ian Callinan, reminded us that, irrespective of entrenched rights in a well known constitution, it was political will which was the ultimate driver of those rights.

Callinan pointed out that it was not until the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and the political determination of the Johnson Administration to change things, that the rights of black Americans theoretically guaranteed under the constitution for decades were finally given substance.

It has long been the commonsense practice of parliaments in Australia to allow free votes on issues requiring social or moral judgements. In my parliamentary career I participated in debates on many such issues, commencing with the Family Law Act debate of 1975 and concluding with the debate on the drug RU486, in 2006.

These debates were usually of a very high quality. This was not only because individual members were free of a binding Party Room decision, but additionally they allowed the representatives of the people to openly and, on many occasions, passionately express their feelings and bring their moral judgements to the debate.

Commentators frequently remarked that these debates brought out the best in our parliamentarians. Some of the debates were difficult, with some MPs not wishing to state a view, through fear of offending this or that group in an electorate. The debates, nonetheless, always attracted increased attendance in the House. They were real issues on which people expressed their views, often with great feeling. They behaved as authentic representatives of the people as well as giving voice to their individual consciences.

In the light of this I often wonder whether it has occurred to the proponents of a Bill of Rights that such debates would largely become a thing of the past if we were to go down the Bill of Rights path. With a Bill of Rights framework decisions on many of these issues would pass to the courts.

If the American and Canadian experience is any guide, issues such as abortion and gay marriage would not be resolved by our elected representatives. They will have surrendered that right to the courts.

My personal views on issues such as these are quite well known, but I have not come here tonight to canvas the merits either way. Rather I wish to make the point that they are issues that should be resolved by the peoples’ representatives. The responsibility of deciding them should not be outsourced to judges.

To illustrate my argument, the debate about abortion in the United States centres largely on how the outcome of a Presidential campaign can alter the composition of the United States Supreme Court and then, in time, potentially overturn or confirm the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe V Wade, which was seen as having liberalised the application of abortion laws.

In Australia such issues are not subject to the vagaries of the philosophical viewpoints, one way or the other, amongst a majority of judges. If parliament wishes to alter the law then it will proceed to do so.

Comparing the Australian and Canadian approaches on gay marriage is illuminating. In Australia, the former government which I led, decided in 2004 that the Marriage Act 1961 (Cth) should be amended to define marriage as a voluntary union for life between a man and woman to the exclusion of all others, thus precluding the possibility of recognising same sex marriages.

In Canada it was not so simple. In a series of decisions the courts had declared that prohibitions on gay marriage, enacted by some provincial legislatures, were contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Only by the Canadian Parliament passing a law expressly overturning those decisions could the provincial prohibitions on gay marriage have been revived. This was a theoretical power only. In practice it was not a realistic option.

I discussed this very issue with John Chretien, the Canadian Prime Minister at the time. He said that overruling the court’s decision was not a practical option. A power, once surrendered by parliament, is not easily retrieved.

The Canadian experience contradicts those Bill of Rights protagonists who assert that a charter, as distinct from an entrenched Bill of Rights, with a power to overrule left with parliament, is the logical compromise. It is not.

Thus in Canada it was not parliament which expressed the will of the Canadian people on this sensitive social issue, it was the courts. Surely that was wrong. Irrespective of the views one might hold on the issue, don’t the people, through their elected representatives, and at all stages, have the right to decide those issues? Or, put another way, why should the people who we elect to govern us be allowed to escape their responsibilities to take decisions?

Not surprisingly, a recent Canadian survey found two-thirds of respondents now supported the concept of elected judges. This is barely surprising given that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has led to the appropriation by the courts of significant areas of responsibility, which in Australia rest with parliament.

The last free vote in which I participated concerned the abortion drug RU486. The issue was whether or not approval for prescribing the drug should rest ultimately with the minister or the Therapeutic Goods Agency. I was on the losing side. Parliament decided to take the power from the minister, and give it to the bureaucracy. I thought that decision was wrong but I do not wish to revisit the merits of the debate.

Rather, I want to make the point that I voted as I did not so much as an expression of support for or opposition to the drug, rather because I believed the final say should rest with the minister, who was ultimately accountable to parliament.

In the debate I had this to say: there is just a whiff in this whole debate – if I may say so, with the greatest of respect to many close friends and colleagues of mine, who are going to vote differently from me on this issue – of “this is a little too difficult and controversial so let’s give it to somebody else”. I am disappointed, may I say, in that attitude, because, in the end, we are elected to make decisions on difficult issues. Life can be very difficult; it can be complicated; it is never simple. I do worry about a proposition which says “we have got this difficult issue so let’s give it to some experts”. In the end, on an issue like this, aren’t we, with proper advice, as expert as anyone else?

The recently retired Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, Murray Gleeson, gave a classic description of the Australian tradition when he gave his farewell address to the National Press Club on 20 August 2008. He was asked whether he had difficulty applying the former government’s mandatory detention or workplace relations laws. His response was telling: If I had found a case in which I couldn’t conscientiously apply the law, I would have resigned. There may be many (laws) with which I disagree but with which I comply as a citizen and which I am happy to enforce as a judge, just because they’re the law and because they have behind them the legitimacy of parliament. That is the way the democratic process works.

This was a succinct statement of a well understood principle in Australia. The people elect parliaments, who make the laws, and judges enforce them.

A retiring Chief Justice in the United States would give a somewhat different response to that of the former Mr Justice Gleeson. He would not be so deferential to Congress and state legislatures. He would emphasise his role in protecting the rights of citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution. This, I might add, would not only be because, unlike the High Court of Australia, the United States Supreme Court deals only with constitutional issues. The point, of course, is that, due to the Bill of Rights character of the American constitution, so many more issues in America have a constitutional dimension.

Of all the arguments I hear advanced in favour of a Bill of Rights none is more offensive to me as an Australian than constant references to this nation’s international obligations.

I have always found these arguments quite humiliating. They suggest that, left to our own devices, the natural instinct for freedom that exists in Australia would not assert itself and that somehow we need the discipline of adherence to international treaties and conventions to stay on the democratic straight and narrow.

Those who hold this view must have forgotten that Australia is one of fewer than ten nations to have remained continuously democratic for the last one hundred years. The fact that the full adult franchise, with equality for men and women, existed in Australia in advance of most other countries is but one example of the maturity and trailblazing character of Australian democracy.

They have also forgotten that on all too many occasions in the past international committees, dealing with human rights issues, have included representatives of nations with appalling domestic records on human rights.

Australia does not need to reach overseas to learn about democracy. It is a well developed and fully embraced habit in this country.

The push for a Bill of Rights in Australia has always had a clear centre-left provenance; although I acknowledge that some prominent Labor figures such as Bob Carr and the current NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, have a different view.

The Murphy legislation of the early 1970s began the process; then there was the Hawke Government’s ultimately abandoned legislation; the failed referendum of 1988 and now the Brennan Inquiry, composed of people whose sympathies are fairly obvious. At a state level we have seen legislation in both Victoria and the ACT.

This suggests that political activists of the Left believed that so-called progressive causes will be better served by a Bill of Rights framework. That may well appear to be the case at present. Values and attitudes do, however, change. I say to those on the centre-left of Australian politics don’t assume that the day won’t come when a particular cause you support might be better served by the votes of a contemporary parliament, rather than a court dominated by men and women holding views you might not share.

I oppose a Bill or Charter of Rights on orthodox democratic grounds. I am guided by the success of Australian democracy to date. It has flowered and has often led the word. Ours is an open society, with little to be ashamed of on the world stage.

We Australians pride ourselves on the egalitarian character of our society. Let us not deny that great heritage by embracing an approach based on the belief that the great mass of the Australian people, properly represented in our parliaments, and property advised by a free and sceptical press cannot decide the great moral and civil issues of their time and get it right.

They have in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.

Anyone who has been following David Bartlett’s attempt to enter the soap opera ratings war will already know that the Labor Party has wasted $500,000 of taxpayers’ money on TV infomercials that were never even broadcast.

I’m not saying that promoting Tasmania to a Tasmanian or national audience on TV is necessarily a bad idea.  We do need to be able to creatively respond to the marketplace to promote our beautiful state and encourage tourists and tourist dollars to come here.

But right now, with job cuts and reductings in government services (including cutting back Tourism Tasmania’s marketing budget) it’s monumentally hypocritical for the Labor Party to be wasting money with such abandon as this. 

The issue right now is not about the idea, its about integrity.  That’s because the Treasurer Michael Aird told Parliament that he didn’t authorise the TV series going to a public tender; the documents say otherwise.  See more on ABC Online.

Why don’t they just tell the truth?  The ABC lodged a Freedom of Information request which came back with news that the Treasurer’s office sent an email saying the Treasurer was happy for the project to “start moving.”  The problem with giving contradictory statements is that it can get you into more of a pickle than if you’d just told the truth in the first place. 

So where is David Bartlett in all this?  Well, it’s really just a case of “Yes, Treasurer”. 

In the latest report, Mr Bartlett says that said he won’t even be asking the Treasurer for an explanation of the contradictory statements.

Of course he won’t – who knows what he’d find if he turned that rock over.

Earlier this week, I attended the Scottsdale public meeting to support Dr Paul McGinity along with more than 200 angry locals.

Anyone who took the time to attend and listen to the range of speakers could only have concluded that there is an agenda to pursue Dr McGinity at the expense of due process and natural justice.

He has been treated appallingly. And as a result, so have his many loyal patients, who are suffering the indignity of not having ready access to their doctor of choice.

There has been plenty of coverage as to how this issue evolved and there’s no shortage of commentary. However I want to throw the following key points into the mix:

Protecting the community

We do need robust processes that protect the community when there are well-founded serious concerns about the competence of a health practitioner.  If there are serious allegations then they should be fully investigated.  That’s not the issue here because that’s something we all agree on.  The key issues here are to do with due process, integrity in government and natural justice.

Access to health services

The North East must not be deprived of proper health services, including access to GPs.  While this saga has now been dragging on for 18 weeks, there is no clear end in sight.  Dr McGinity wishes to provide health care and his patients want it.  From the little we are told, it seems clear that he hasn’t been suspended on the basis that he isn’t a danger to his patients or done anything immoral or illegal.  (If he was a safety risk, why would he be allowed to practice 18 hours per week without oversight?).

Extraordinary costs

Because of Medical Council conditions, Dr McGinity must be overseen by a locum (a relief GP) which is costing upwards of $5,000 per week.  The Government should provide some assistance to Dr McGinity for additional costs arising from this drawn-out debacle given that Lara Giddings continues to run the limp line that her “hands are tied” on the behaviour of the Medical Council and that she is clearly responsible for the appointment of members of the MCT and the law governing its operation.

Conflict of Interest?

I make no allegation here, but I raise an important issue.  The point that must be publicly resolved is whether or not the Medical Council President has a potential conflict of interest, and if so, how it is being managed.  Dr Peter Sexton was on the sub-committee which purported to initially suspend Dr McGinity and was then found by the Supreme Court to have acted wrongly.  He has also been the spokesman for the MCT and in spite of talking in an inflammatory way about serious allegations linked to patients who have since died (and who therefore of course cannot speak for themselves), he has subsequently revealed on ABC radio that the complaints against the doctor related to him working too many hours!  His direct quote (see ABC Website) was “Where we have serious concerns about a particular component of a doctor’s medical practice, the only powers we have to control that are to suspend the doctor and then invite the doctor through undertakings to agree to restrictions on his practice”.  Isn’t that just being heavy handed?  Now, Medicare Australia holds confidential and privileged records of all doctors’ bulk billing records, including the number and duration of consultations with patients.  Dr Sexton is Tasmanian state director of Medicare.  The public must be satisfied that privileged information gained in one job could not have been used in the Medical Council deliberations.

Where is Labor?  Missing in a crisis, again.

Elected Labor representatives must come out of hiding on this issue.  It was certainly telling that the Labor Party failed to show up (except a silent note-taker) to address the meeting.  It’s clear that the culture of “wait and let it blow over” continues to be the political strategy being employed by Michelle O’Byrne, Jodie Campbell and other labor wannabees.  All Labor MPs must show an interest and make some comment in support of the cause or give reasons for their reluctance to support the community.  We need their support to get the best outcome.  So even though I am a natural rival of the ALP, I encourage them to change strategy and help us achieve what is good for the whole community.  Remember, all we are asking from anyone is for due process and proper health services.  Who could possibly have a problem with that?

Labor mates

Perhaps Dr Sexton’s past membership of the ALP is relevant in explaining Labor’s reluctance to do anything or ask any tough questions on this critical issue.  Is he still a member?  At the very least we know that under state law all members of the MCT are nominated by the Bartlett Labor Government.

Congratulations to some great people!

Finally congratulations to the support committee for their advocacy of due process, natural justice and access to a GP.

The Government has itself made it necessary to sack 800 public servants through allowing the public sector to grow unchecked over the last 11 years. When Labor came to power in 1998, there were 24,855 public servants. As at 30 June 2008, there were 28,960 public servants. (And that figure is out of date by one year now…)

Our very real fear is that the Government will put the public sector through the pain of its so-called Employee Management Program only to lack the discipline to keep numbers in check in the future. Remeber, history tells us that Labor can’t manage money.

A Hodgman Liberal Government will inject discipline and accountability into this process by requiring each responsible Minister to provide a report to Parliament once every 3 months that details staffing movements in and out of their departments, the number of full time equivalent employees in their department and the total cost of employees in their departments at the end of each quarter.

We need a government with vision and leaderships for the future.

We need a change of government. Soon.