The bad script is
really symptomatic of larger problems. After
all that has been said in the media, these past few months, regarding poor
governance, poor leadership and profligate spending, it might have been
a reasonabe expectation that the Government would signal, in a new Session of the
Legislature, that it was ready to take responsibility for the our fiscal mess. The Dunderdale,
together with the former Williams’ Government, largely helped create it. As a precursor to the Budget, we might have expected
the broad strokes of a plan to invoke change and earn the public trust.
What was on offer was
disappointing. It eschewed any
responsibility for the predicament in which the Government finds itself. It contained none of the markers that
suggest the Administration is trying to rehabilitate itself from a very shaky
beginning or that it is learning from the messages sent via a series of bad
Polls. The Speech confirms that the Premier lacks an understanding of the
demands of public administration or of the themes and ideas that underpin a
Government’s heft.
