Falklands : Legislative Council (27/07/07) Part 3
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 30.07.2007 (Article Archived on 13.08.2007)
Following are motion for Adjournment speeches of three Councillors at the LEGCO meeting held on 27 July 2007.
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL (270707)
Part 3a: Motion for Adjournment Speeches
By J. Brock (FINN)
CS: Mr. Speaker, Honourable Members, I move this House stands adjourned sine die.
Cllr the Hon Mr Michael Summers (MS):
Mr Speaker, Honourable members, the Chief Executive has already noted that this is his last performance – attendance – sorry – in this House. It is therefore my pleasure or duty to be able to present him with the customary Legislative Council tie. In doing so I might just ask Members to reflect on a change to procedure. It seems to me rather odd that somebody can serve as a Member of the Legislative Council for five years - or nearly five years – and then be entitled to wear the tie, when in fact you are an elected Member you are entitled to wear it from the day you are first elected. So we might think about changing the process to have it as an introductory rather than as a valedictory presentation.
CS: Mr Speaker if I may reserve comment until my (turn).
MS: Having made a short presentation to Chris on behalf of the Legislative Council, Members of the Government, the Public Service and the community in general how much we have appreciated his time here, the hard work and dedication that he has put in to his service in the Falklands and to wish him and Denise the very best for the future.
The role of Chief Executive is not always an easy one. That’s why we pay him so much money. But it’s also not that easy for the spouse of a Chief Executive. There are pressures- there are community pressures and personal pressures and I would just like to pay tribute to the way that Denise, in a quiet and highly dignified fashion has carried on her role here as the wife of the Chief Executive and thank her for her contributions to society here in general.
Chris, we will, of course, miss you but like all your predecessors, once you are gone we will probably forget you. (Joke) That doesn’t mean the work that you’ve done hasn’t been valuable and it hasn’t been done in a thoroughly professional and competent manner. And, for that, we thank you very much. I think you have done the job we expected of you when you were appointed 4.5 years ago. At different times you require different people. I think Chris’s sort of quiet and calm attitude to work – to the business of Government has been very helpful and I think his support for and direction of the public service in general has been very welcome during these 4.5 years so from all of us, thank you very much indeed, for your time here.
I have just a couple of other things that I would like to talk about in the Motion for Adjournment. This is the first meeting of the Legislative Council since the celebrations in June of the 25th Anniversary. And, whilst I don’t want to repeat many of the things that I and the others had the opportunity during the week itself, I would like to put on record in Legislative Council our thanks to some people who were involved in preparations for the June week and helped make it go so well. It was a very successful week of commemorations and maybe a little bit of celebration here and there. One or two people said to me – is it going to go ok – how will we get on – do you think it’s going to work – and my constant response was – if you measure the likelihood of success by the level of the input in the first place it’s going to be tremendously successful. A huge amount of work went into preparing for the June week. And, it was a great success and I would like to thank everybody for their efforts.
Most particularly I would like to thank the Police Force, who did a lot of quiet work. They were – all of them – all at virtually all of the time; it was a tremendous effort by a unit that was already under some pressure. And, they put in a very large number of hours and much of it largely unnoticed. And, the best policing is probably policing that is unnoticed. So I would just like to put on record my thanks and our thanks to them for all that effort.
It would be invidious to go through a list of names of people who made the greatest or partial contributions but I think I should mention Claudette Anderson and Cherie Clifford from our office, Harriet Hall from Government House, Maria Strange, who worked for Lewis, and John Mascall-Bott from the Military side, who between them put in hundreds and hundreds of hours of work to make it all work and, of course, the Speaker, who pulled it all together.
But there were many others. There were those who organised the events, there were the Churches, who put in a lot of time to preparing and carrying out the ceremonies. There was the Public Works Department, there were the private hosts and drivers, who looked after many of our guests and made our guests’ stay here that much more important and that much more personable. And, there were the caterers and the Air Services and many, many others. It takes a big team to make something like that work. It did work and thanks to everybody and thanks again to the speaker for pulling it all together.
A very quick note on smoking, just to reassure the young folks in the community that the fact that we passed a bill today on making sure that the law about under age smoking is implemented doesn’t mean that we are directing all of our attention towards young people and forgetting about the rest. I think there will be other issues on smoking, much more to do with adults, back in this House in due course.
I would like to pay tribute now to the sports people of the Falklands, who have been doing a tremendous job for us in the last few months. All those Islanders who went to the Island Games in Rhodes and represented us there and performed very creditably in a number of disciplines, to the supreme Cricket team, who recently toured the United Kingdom and had a couple of boasts – that contributed very little to the victories – except at the Foreign Office where I think I did play an instrumental part. Thank goodness for that. But to the teams who have just been to Bisley – the FIDF, who have just been to Bisley. It’s a great contribution that the sports people make to taking out the message about the Falklands. And, whilst it’s not an up front part of our public relations regime, whenever you go out as a sports person representing the Falklands you inevitably get to talk to people and explain what’s going on here, what it’s about what our ambitions are, what our fears are and you spread that message around a number of people. And that sort of soft PR is very, very important, indeed. And, I know fro sure that all our sports people who represent the Falklands around the world do so with great panache and great dignity.
And, on the subject of sports and exercise, I give notice that I will be continuing my campaign to see the inclusion of competitive sports in the school curriculum at the Community School. I had the opportunity of attacking the Director the other evening after a couple of glasses of wine and we had a very lively discussion. I think there is a lot of exercise taking place in the Infant/Junior School. I am not so worried about that but the role of competitive sports in education and in youth development in general must not be under estimated. And, isn’t it fascinating to see the United Kingdom Government, under the new Prime Minister talking about the need for how many hours a week it is for competitive sports – not just jumping around on a rubber ball or something in a PE class. Competitive sports prepare young people for life and it really matters. And so does exercise matter. And, events like the SCB Marathon here are good fun. They provide a high profile and didn’t we all do well and all of that. But the real issue is that exercise matters. We have just decided in these last couple of days to recruit an exercise referral practitioner because we recognise the importance of exercise to people’s health in the community. And, so the whole issue of exercise from Infant/Junior School through the Community School and on into the community is important and I hope to continue promoting that for as long as we reasonably can until we get where we want to be.
So, on that note, Mr. Speaker I support the Motion for Adjournment.
Cllr The Hon Mrs. Janet Robertson:
Mr Speaker, Honourable Members, before I start what I was going to say I just want to say I totally support Councillor Summers’ comments about competitive sports and I hope I will be on your list of people who campaign for sports days to occur on a weekend so that the whole community can go and cheer on our students and their respective disciplines.
I was going to say a bit about immigration. Recently I have had a few comments to the effect that unbridled immigration is placing an unsustainable burden on our services and undermining our Falklands traditions. It’s just a few comments that you hear and I really wanted to address this. There are really two sides to this issue. And, on the one hand, I can understand why people might feel that the Falklands’ way of life is being eroded by a fairly steep rise in the population in the last few years. But on the other hand, our economy has been generally buoyant and there has been a demand for labour to fulfil the needs that development has created. Every job from customer assistant to plumber to Doctor needs to be filled by someone. And, if we don’t have enough people in the Islands then quite simply, we need to look abroad in order to fulfil our labour market.
The alternative is to stop or regress development and do away with the number of people who are required. But that is only possible if we are prepared to give up some of our modern comforts and return to some of our old traditional ways of self reliance. And, I know some people would like this to happen and they might have good justification for it. But we are all caretakers of the Islands for future generations. And, I doubt anyone under the age of 41 – as a random number – is liable to be thrilled by this concept.
So on that basis, if we see that we need immigrants to sustain our current way of life could we say, hand on heart, that they should not be welcomed into our community and provide them with opportunities to become permanent members of it? Can we really start to dictate to people who they can and cannot marry. Clearly we can’t. It’s a human rights issue just for starters.
But what we do need to do is to ensure that our immigration system is properly controlled, that processes and requirements are clear to all seekers of permanent residency, that criminal and health records are properly checked, that the system of entitlements is fair across the board, that we ensure that our systems complement and not shrink the local supply of skills both current and future and that the principles of permanent residency and status are consistent and mean the same to everyone. I am happy to say that we have been working very hard on the subject since this Council commenced and, God willing, we will have a report by the end of the year for public discussion. We can debate this issue further.
I’d also like to comment on a recent editorial in the newspaper. It wasn’t about immigration this time but it does reflect on the supply and availability of our services. It said “Don’t allow the idea that our expectations are too high make us settle for anything less than the best.” And further, “expectation can never be too high in our other area.” And, the reference was to education and medical services.
I am very happy to say that this Council has placed a very high value on these areas, as have indeed all previous Councils and no doubt future ones as well. But the critical element to this report is not about meeting expectations but about establishing priorities. Quite simply, there is not a health care or education system that can and does meet expectations. We are no different. It is beyond our means to do so and it is beyond the means of every other country in the world.
What can expectation demand - transplants, plastic surgery, overseas visits, private clinics for births and orthodontists and any other conceivable condition or ailment? And, in terms of education, where is the limit to that? What is acceptable to fund out of public finances? Should government fund any request? Or, should some judgement be applied? And, does this judgment not immediately indicate a restriction on expectation? What other services can and should be sacrificed to health and education?
Roads, housing, wages, leisure facilities – to take an extreme example, if we were all extremely healthy and well educated but had to hobble our way down a dirt track and be brought to tears with no telly and no gym and many of us with no jobs and go home to a cardboard shack every night, we might not be terribly happy at all.
Leaving exaggeration aside, we probably do have the most generous education and medical services system in the world. And, we will always endeavour to give these areas the very high priority that they deserve. But we can’t match expectations by ruining the economy. We must, as we do for all other areas, budget sensibly so that the community at large can benefit from a wide range of decent services.
That is the cold reality part. I just wanted to say something about an arguably non-essential service that’s just hit the Falklands – the glass imploders – I am absolutely delighted that they are here. I think it’s created as much enthusiasm pretty well as the wind farm has, so I am looking forward to see if our budget can sustain any further development in that area in the future in terms of waste management.
And, just finally, I would like to echo Councillor Summers’ thanks to the Chief Executive. When we came on to Council in November 2005 we had an opportunity to learn a lot from Chris and to have a good feel about what a good Chief Executive can and should provide the community. I personally will be sorry to see him go because he is a neighbour as well as a colleague and I wish you and Denise all the best. But I know that your hens, wherever they might be, will not be as good as the ones that we share.
Mr Speaker I support the Motion.
Cllr The Hon Mr. Ian Hansen:
Thank you Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Honourable members, in rising to support the Motion for Adjournment I, too, would like to mention our departing Chief Executive. It would be very easy for me to stand here and say that he’s been the best Chief Executive I had to work with. In fact, he’s the only Chief Executive that I had work with. (Joke) I would just like to wish you, Chris and Denise the very best for the future. And, we hope to see you again sometime.
Councillor Summers briefly mentioned in his address that the bigger issue of smoking in public places still has to be addressed. This ban has, of course, been in force in the UK since the 1st of July and I was in the UK at the time and it was quite interesting to observe how it went on. What I found of interest was the apparent seamless transition from a pub closing one evening as a place where smoking was allowed and open the next day where smoking was not allowed on the premises. It was distinctly noticeable that when one walked past bars, and you notice I said “walk past,” that the bars that had made this transition, there wasn’t any decrease in any way of the amount of customers. So, I think that is something that would have been fairly noticeable if it had been the case. However, what I also noticed that in the evenings when there wasn’t any rain you would see probably 15 to 20 people standing outside and smoking. Or, if you want to put it another way, polluting the fresh air. Therefore, when we in the Falklands introduce such a ban, I think we should be absolutely clear in our minds, we won’t automatically be free from passive smoking because the issue of passive smoking will still be there. It may not be as noticeable or as threatening, perhaps but it will still be there, just in a different arena. And, to me it all comes back to education It comes back to educating our youngsters that smoking not only ruins their health and can shorten their lives but it significantly affects others.
I would just also like to briefly mention a couple of groups of people who I think deserve a bit of tribute over the last few weeks. One group of people are the staff off FIGAS, who have been operating under pretty difficult conditions and it may not get any better immediately but they certainly deserve to be thanked for keeping things going.
The other group of people I don’t think we mention very often are those people in PWD who, when the weather is like this, get up at some ungodly hour of the morning and make the roads clear for us so those of us who drive to work can do so in relative safety. And, I think they need a mention. And, they don’t do it in a super duper heated vehicle. They do it in some old, antiquated tractor that probably would get a place in the museum. And, it’s quite surprising, actually, that we still use this antiquated system.
(RC) Under his breath “Superb Tractor!”
IH: And finally, Mr Speaker, I am never keen on quoting from the newspaper but the letter on the front Penguin News today to the uninitiated it may appear that or could appear that the Falkland Islands government are constantly guilty of failing to encourage people back to our Islands. I don’t believe this is the case. And, it’s not appropriate for me to deliver any more on that point, I don’t think, but what I would say that this is very much one side of a long story.
Mr Speaker I beg to support the motion.
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