What is Vicki Dunne talking about?

Dunne has been doing some useful things in the Assembly.

It was Dunne who pushed forward the improvements to the FOI Act.

And it’s good she has put forward proposals for improving the process for judicial appointments.

More generally, I think its impressive that the Liberals are managing to run from opposition a positive agenda for improving the integrity of government in the ACT.

This is good work that needs to be done.

Is she the one who looks like she’s wearing a couple of sausages on her face?

It doesn’t matter what she talks about! Dunne thinks she is a genius and tells everyone she and Humphries are the brains trust of the Liberal Party. Think about it…she actually believes that! Her fellow Liberals have been underwhelmed by her efforts over the years. Her strategy is to continuously scheme and be the last one standing. When schools were announced by the Stanhope regime as closing down in 2006, Dunne struggled as Shadow Education Minister to make any ground. Her colleagues noted her lack of action on that issue. We remember the bill not paid and being taken to court (front page Canberra Times). Many of us also remember the front page Canberra Times story about the overseas trip and the failure to provide a short report. She is a hard right wing non event with an ever declining vote. Dunne remains a prime example of an overpaid MLA on the public payroll sucking up all the benefits while at the Assembly. She is certainly not Minister material (should the Liberals fluke some electoral result in the next decade). She should move on.

VD 4 CM?

Vicki Dunne talking incomprehensible rubbish??? Here’s another scoop, today is Thursday

The extreme (and possibly libelous) headline is certainly out of kilter with the mild content of the release. How is getting a URL wrong (if this is actually the case) ‘rorting’ ?

From looking at the ACT Liberals’ website I’m also amused to see that Gary Humphries would rather die than see paid parking in the Parliamentary Triangle: http://www.canberraliberals.org.au/html/s02_article/article_view.asp?article_id=843&nav_cat_id=-1&nav_top_id=-1 Who’s writing press releases for these guys?

These two models, Assembly and local councils, are not exclusive.

I think that the ACT needs to have local councils, eg a Tuggeranong Council and a Gungahlin council.

The Assembly and local councils might then have some chance of exercising effective supervision over the ACT bureaucracy and giving ACT citizens a real opportunity to participate in the decisions that shape their city.

I’m not sure if the media release has since been fixed, but the attributions are correct and it doesn’t need fixing.

It’s a poorly written media release, but ultimately it conforms to journalistic/media release practice. If someone is speaking for many lines (like in this), it’s standard to not end each sentence with attribution (because only one person is talking).

So,

“Words. More words.

Words. Even more words. Et cetera.

Words. Talking,” Mrs Dunne said.

is correct.

This kind of thing just highlights why it’s so crazy to have a minature parliament to run a city. These people are being paid out of the public purse to do trouble-making like this: technically, it could be argued that this is exactly her job. And plainly, it’s pretty pointless.

A council model would be far more effective.

Who cares, its just more useless noise out the Assembly building.