Falklands : Legislative Assembly Meeting Friday, 18 September 2009 Part 3
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 27.09.2009 (Article Archived on 11.10.2009)
Motion for Adjournment Speeches
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY MEETING FRIDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 2009 PART 3
Commentary by J. Brock (FINN)
The Hon Mike Rendell:
Mr Speaker, Honourable members, in rising to support this Motion for Adjournment, the final one that I am going to have the privilege to do that as I am standing down when we complete this term, I am not going to get into any electioneering obviously for obvious reasons. I just want to make a few general points about – and by the way, I’m not suggesting that anybody else here is either.
I just want to make a few general observations about the Camp and some of the issues that have been floating around in the last couple of months in particular and they refer to the question of wool movements from West Falkland, stock movements from West Falkland and the future of the Department of Agriculture or at least the possibility that funding will be taken away from that department obviously as a cost savings measure.
In this I would just want to make a general observation that at the same time as this discussion has been going on there has also been a review of the Falkland Islands Meat Company taking place. And given that we do not yet have the outcomes of that FIMCO review and given, in my opinion, that it is very likely that it will require high volumes of product to go through the Abattoir in order to make it succeed, then it seems to me to be premature to be making judgements on reducing the costing of the Agricultural Department which is there to support the farmer in producing meat to go to the Abattoir, I therefore think that it would be appropriate to await the outcome of the FIMCO review before any further steps are taken. And I hope that the new Assembly, when it comes into being, will bear these points in mind. As FIMCO, with out a doubt, is going to be a key part of the future of the Camp agricultural production scheme. And so the two are intrinsically linked and so is the Department of Agriculture.
I would also want to make a general observation that there had been a number of ups and downs in the period of this Council – this Assembly – as it is now – but that I believe we are getting there slowly but surely.
But there is one area within my portfolio where more of that should have been focused earlier. An that being maintaining an equitable spread of radio and television coverage to the Camp. I believe that an apology is due for this extended period of poor service and I unequivocally offer one on behalf of the Falkland Islands Government.
As this is my swan song I thought I should try to explain what this term as an Elected Member has meant to me. I had done some pretty exhilarating things in my time including activities that have resulted in taking off in many more aircraft than I have landed in. And I witnessed, as another example, first hand what is without any doubt an awesome spectacle of a submarine surfacing alongside you 200 miles from anywhere in the middle of the night and on purpose. But I can say that honestly that the experiences of the last four years consistently matched those earlier episodes in a former life.
It would be invidious to pick out specific examples but in very broad terms, being part of the management of Falkland Islands Plc has been a mind blowing, challenging, rewarding and all encompassing spate of goings on that, I am convinced, would be hard to match anywhere. It has been a privilege to work alongside so many talented and resourceful individuals and right across the spectrum of Falklands’ society – a resource we must continue to build on and so important for our long-term future.
There is no doubt that the next four years will be more challenging in terms of balancing budgets than anything I have witnessed and that some very difficult decisions on cutting public expenditure are almost inevitable. This will require Elected Members to work together to achieve long-term economic stability.
And, in my view, this Assembly has set a good example in this regard, so I am doing a little bit of electioneering for you at the moment.
I wish the next Assembly good fortune but good fortune alone will not be enough. An ability to work together as a team is much more likely to bring success.
Finally, I would like to extend particular appreciation to all those sitting around this table today. It has been an interesting political apprenticeship, albeit that I completed it at the age of 64 and ¾ years of age.
Mr Speaker, I support the motion.
The Hon Mr Richard Stevens:
Mr Speaker, Honourable members, I would also like to speak about coming to the end of this particular journey as Councillor Mike Rendell said being four challenging years that we had to deal with.
It seems to me that when times are tough we look around as a community and make judgments about waste, whether it’s the Abattoir, Ferry or Expat wages. Whoever is in the Assembly in November will have to consider all these things but not in isolation. And there are always choices but they don’t necessarily save money. And they have the potential to cause social problems.
If the Abattoir were shut down for instance, some farms would fail. People would head to town to work only putting pressure on housing, employment and social services, not to mention the political implications.
Let’s look at wages for ex-pats. It may seem obscene to many that we pay so much for people we need to bring in like teachers, nurses, managers, where these wages and conditions are what is expected internationally. And if you pay less it is virtually guaranteed that we will recruit people that no one else wants.
Perhaps a more important point is our own youngsters, who we hope will return to the Islands. Will they return to give something back if the wages are lower than elsewhere? Of course some will but I believe many won’t.
As the portfolio holder for Education, I would like to thank all the staff from every facet of the Department for their efforts over the last four years. It has been a roller coaster ride and I think we are now in a better position to deliver the needs of a modern day education service.
As this assembly’s time comes to an end the Training Centre is moving to new and enhanced premises with workshops, classrooms, and office facilities. I am sure that this will help them develop this arm of education.
I would like to thank members of the Board of Education over this period and for the support that Councillor Robertson has given me as the vice-chair. The work that we did during the restructuring and consultation process was some of the most demanding that I undertook.
A team of MLAs, Cllr Dr Andrea Clausen, Councillor Janet Robertson and myself have had children in two schools and further and higher education during our tenure. It must be the most representative group for many years.
I would also like to say a few words about our rural community. It has been another challenging time for all of us. Probably people on the West and the outer Islands have seen the biggest changes in some of their fundamental services – the service delivered by FIGAS, the change from a coastal shipping system to one of a ferry and the last of a link direct to the outside world on the West. We have worked on these issues and found some solutions but hopefully transport will keep evolving, creating opportunities and delivering a fair, cost effective system to all parts of the Falkland Islands.
Regrets - obviously the time and pain in delivering some of our projects - people still seem to be suffering from poor service from parts of the new telecommunications set-up. As Councillor the Honourable Mike Rendell has already mentioned the unacceptable long period that most of the Camp has had without television or even radio this year and last.
I leave my disappointments here and thank all colleagues in the Assembly on committees and everyone that I worked with and finally I would also like to thank family and friends, especially Tony, for the support and encouragement over the last four years, which has made it all possible.
I support the Motion for Adjournment.
The Honourable Ian Hansen:
Mr Speaker, Honourable Members, as the Honourable Mike Rendell has already indicated, it’s very easy to turn a final address to any Council or Assembly into an election speech so I will do my best to resist that temptation and not stray into that area.
My two colleagues who have just spoken actually covered many of the issues I wanted to mention. And I am in total agreement with them. As far as rural issues go the sustainability of Camp population is of paramount importance in the future. And of course transport and telecommunications will play a huge part in that and it’s very important that it isn’t lost sight of and I do hope that the new Assembly, whoever they may be, will keep that in mind.
Just on the issue of what is expected of the new assembly come November – they will of course have many controversial and difficult issues to address. I wish them well and there will be both political and financial difficulties and as I say I wish them well.
During the course of the four years of this existing Assembly we have had many – I am not sure how many – but many public meetings in this very room. And the ones I found the most stimulating being when we have had young people or interested young people to discuss. And the amount of them that turned up and really, I found very stimulating and they speak well and to me it bodes well for the future of the Falklands. They are the people who will be taking us forward in the future.
And I have to share with you at this point a comment made by a member of the electorate not that long ago. Perhaps a bit unkindly but he did say that if we don’t get some younger candidates soon then the next assembly faces a real danger of its average age and its average IQ passing each other but going in opposite directions. Now I did find that a bit unkind but I think the point was perhaps well made.
My immediate portfolio responsibilities over the last four years have been tourism, agriculture and mineral resources. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the departmental staff of those organisations. I would like to think that I have worked with them as part of the team. And I thank them for that as well as the board members on FLH and Tourism, etc.
The Honourable Mike Rendell, of course, has just said that he’s not putting his name forward. I was going to say retiring but if he’s actually going to work on an island with stock it’s not going to be retirement.
We had actually worked together over the last four years on many things in tourism, transport, obviously agriculture and more recently the rural development strategy and the FLH Board and have also attended overseas together on a couple of occasions. We had a CPA regional in 2006 and the party conferences in 2007. And as I say, it’s been a pleasure to work with you, Mike and as you have already spoken in Council (his intention to retire) I disagree with that, I guess. I would like to thank you for your input to this Council.
And finally, Mr Speaker, I would like to thank you for your input as well because – and in particular – in the way in which you encountered debate and I know you have done a lot of work on re-doing our standing orders and I thank you for that.
Sir, I beg to support the Motion.
The Hon Dr Andrea Clausen:
Mr Speaker, Honourable members, I actually received this morning and had gone over the minutes from the meeting of the Legislative Council meeting at the end of the previous Government just to see what those numbers had to say and also to remind myself of the challenges they faced in their four years of government and to see how that compared with the challenges that we faced. It made quite interesting reading actually. And I won’t go into a lot of detail but I will refer to it on occasion.
And so I would like today just to reflect back on my four years. Looking at some of the bad news areas, I think, and the good and hopefully the good that will continue into the future, although things will get more challenging I believe.
From the bad news point of view, it was interesting to not that my Honourable Colleague, Mike Summers, had referred extensively – not extensively but considerably to challenges that had been faced in the previous government with our neighbours. And, I guess, at that time there had been hopes that they wouldn’t continue. Sadly, over the last four years, we have seen that worsen considerably. Just to list a few things, we obviously have seen the cessation of co-operation on fisheries science, which is a great loss and has huge impacts both from an industry prospective but more importantly from an environmental prospective, we have seen the presidential decree regarding oil companies where those that operate in the Falklands and choose to operate in Argentina are penalised by a fine. We have seen the walking away of the special area of co-operation in 2007, the anti fisheries legislation, which again targets fishing companies who operate in the Falklands and may operate in Argentina, on another level, at the economic level and that of course remains the most challenging. On another level, of course, this week we have seen yet another act where they interfere with the running of an international conference, which really is in my mind quite childish behaviour. And what they don’t realise is that the more that they do these things, the more it hardens our resilience. And we won’t be giving in so hopefully they will learn at some point that if they want to make progress in these areas we actually need to work together.
On another point I would like to raise, which I think hasn’t been particularly good news over this past four years that equally wasn’t good news in the previous government was that on the fisheries. I noted that out of the four years of that government three of them had seen very low catches, which of course had an impact on licence uptake.
Now whilst we haven’t seen – apart from this year – quite such dramatic – I think – on average drops – in fact we have had a bumper year – but I think that did – or it looks like it did to the fishing industry in particular Illex – was to weaken its robustness. So now even in years where we appear to have really good abundance of those species – of Illex in particular – the companies involved – businesses involved - are – have been probably damaged by the years of these low catches and so are less able to turn up and buy the licences. So, we didn’t see, for example, in the year we had – I think it was 2006 we had excellent catches. Unfortunately the vessels didn’t arrive in the numbers we had hoped they would. Illex remains a challenge. I will move on to financial in a moment but of course that is a big impact on our budgets going forwards.
And, I guess lastly because I only want to talk about three bits of bad news before I get my long list of good news is the Global Financial Crisis. Nobody has escaped including us. I mean, there’s been nothing quite like it in the world, I believe, since 1929 and this is possibly worse. It might have been averted to a reasonable degree by the actions of Governments but we were not immune. Our investments were hit. We still haven’t seen the full impact with regard to some of our industries. I believe – tourism – hopefully things will improve before the bad news gets a better grip of people, if you like.
It was good to read this morning in Standing Finance, in terms of our finances and we did, of course, have an investment report from the previous month that the provisional out-turn for the 2008/9, which was the year that this catastrophic financial event took place is not going to be so painful and bad as we anticipated. In April of this year it looked like we were facing a £7.3 Million deficit to our budget, which originally had been set with a surplus of nearly £.5Million. That situation has thankfully improved and now we are looking at an out turn of around £3.7Million deficit. Still (that’s) not good news but much better than anticipated, so that’s good.
My Colleagues have already commented on the challenges that we face financially. We – I say, the new government – of course this is the end of this one – I think they will increase from a fishing licence point of view and a number of others. I am sure Honourable Colleagues who are about to speak will say more about this but I would just like to comment that I believe we have taken steps already to try and mitigate the level of damage that some of these, if you like, exposed areas can do to us such as Illex licence fees. We have also looked more nationally and of course the Economic Development Strategy and the Rural Development Strategy are two big pieces of work, which will, I sincerely hope will go a long way to help mitigate further financial challenge for our country.
On the good news front, things that I have certainly enjoyed seeing happen – I have been involved in – they might seem small and people might not agree with me – wind turbines – we were able to reduce the price of electricity this year despite one of the other challenges we faced – primarily because of the installation of these three turbines and it is good that we’ve got another three coming and we hope that in future we may be able to do similar things depending on what happens with fuel prices. We will have to wait and see but it can only be a good thing that we reduce our reliance on imported fuels.
Our tax take has gone up so that can only mean to me that private sector growth is good – positive – and it’s going in the right direction. Of course they face challenges like the public sector but that has got to be a good piece of news.
Personally I am very pleased that today we were able to pass the Immigration Amendment Bill. I know my Honourable Colleague, Mike Rendell, commented about the hard work. This has been a long, extensive and painful exercise working on immigration mainly because it is so complex. Every time you think something pretty simple and I’m a black and white kind of girl – you end up with 20 shades of grey in the middle and it just is quite hard work ploughing through it so I would like to add my thanks to all of those people involved – the outgoing Principle Immigration Officer and our Acting Principle Immigration Officer and the Chief Executive and their team who have ensured that that Bill was able to come into this House today.
Another area that I think was really good news event or series of events that took place were those in 2007. Personally I was very proud to be able to be involved in those events. I think it was a really good year for the Falklands. It was also a year of reflection but it was also a good year for bringing ourselves forward in terms of what we’ve done and where we want to go. And I think that’s something that we should always be proud of.
Finally – almost finally – I would just like to say I think another piece of good news – I appreciate that it’s had a very rocky start – but I think it has been the right start was the introduction of the cross-sound ferry. And my colleagues from the Rural Constituency will have more to say about that than me but I personally feel that that was do not just for the Agricultural sector but also for tourism and the survival of the whole country not just Stanley.
I would like to offer my thanks to the administrative staff both at Gilbert House and across government. After being elected with practically no background in politics four years ago, I had an awful steep learning curve and I possibly couldn’t have done it without all of their support and I believe I had one officer said to me that no question is too stupid. I hope they stood by that because I certainly asked a lot of them.
Very finally, I would like to offer the best of luck to my colleague Mike Rendell and also the Honourable Richard Cockwell. I hope it is a bit or retirement and not just challenges with meat and wool and a move to the island. I would like to wish you the very best.
Sir I support the Motion.
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