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Canberra Today 13°/17° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Digital edition April 28

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One Response to Digital edition April 28

Robin Underwood says: 30 April 2022 at 9:04 pm

Are the ACT Liberals suffering from the Cinderella Complex?
Ian Meikle’s “Only 906 sleeps, Elizabeth, it’s time to step up” of 27/04/22 seems to suggest so. The Cinderella Complex is a psychological condition where a person or group prefers to endure domination by others because they are afraid to rock the boat and distrust their own ability to take on responsibility for changing a bad situation. Meikle’s description regarding the opposition’s apparent lack of ambition to challenge the government seems to fit that psychological pattern well. He notes “… the perpetual world of opposition has become normal work for the Libs … Who needs all the stress of government?”
The opposition is, however, making some efforts to improve the existing state of governance. Meikle points out that a long list of deplorable conditions ranging from the scandalous state at some high schools to the country’s longest waiting times at hospital emergency departments (see Meikle’s article for more) was submitted by Elizabeth Lee before Easter. But this hardly looks like a concerted effort to convince the electorate that Liberal leadership is the answer to the existing woes.
The Liberals must be aware that the many problems encountered in the ACT’s essential public services are due to underfunding: for the government is siphoning off monies from our rates and taxes to finance the white elephant of the light rail extension from Civic to Woden. One would have thought that here was the Liberal’s chance to show true leadership by counter-acting the government’s misleading advertisements and by energetically and loudly informing the electorate of what is wrong with the project: such as contracts in the high millions awarded to foreign companies before the public is informed of the financial and ecological cost of the extension, an inflexible, outdated transport system imported from overseas without an independent assessment of alternatives such as the rapidly developing technology of electric buses built in Australia, no response to the Auditor General’s critical report of Stage 2A of the light rail after 7 months, to name just a few. As Meikle puts it, the salary is good and the hours are family-friendly, and there seems to be little desire to mount the action required to take charge of the government.
When on occasion there is some complaint about aspects of the light rail from the shadow cabinet, Minister Steel teases the Liberals with a phrase like “you sound as if you are in opposition to the light rail.” While surely the answer ought to be “You are absolutely right, mate, we are!” there is instead deafening silence. This permits the government to bask in the claim that the Assembly is fully united in supporting the multi-billion-dollar extension of the light rail to Woden. Thus, the opposition is losing out on gaining the backing of the many who oppose the extension of the light rail, while the electorate has no opportunity to express their support for an alternative government at this stage before the iconic clover leaf access to Commonwealth Ave is destroyed and the carting of 60.000 cubic metres of dirt to raise London Circuit marks the beginning of years of traffic chaos.
With their passive support of a rigid, obsolete and uneconomical transport system which will forever change the iconic views that have made Canberra world-wide famous as the Bush Capital, the Liberals have become complicit in the government’s destructive plans for our city.

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