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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (13 June) . . Page.. 1572 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

We think that a concerning point in relation to the Impulse Airlines, a point that has been discussed in this place before, should be referred to the Auditor-General. A claim was made that the Victorian government had offered Impulse Airlines $10 million to locate in Victoria and that if this Assembly did not approve the deal the government put then Impulse would be offered to Victoria. We were told in this place that there had been an offer by Victorians, and that was part of the incentive for us to move quickly and approve the proposal before us. It turns out that Victoria made no offer. Over a reasonable span in the public hearings, when we tried to identify who had made the claim of an offer, we could not. It was like the Bruce Stadium audit report. We could not find out who said it. It was one of those phantoms. Nobody actually said it. It arose. It came up. It is a very serious matter when a claim made in this place has no factual basis and we gloss over it. This must be referred to the Auditor-General, and it must be investigated. The source of that claim must be identified. We must identify whether it was a deliberate mislead or not.

There is a recommendation in relation to the offer of assistance from the peak body ACROD to identify unmet need. There is a recommendation in relation to Bruce Stadium. We were informed that Bruce Stadium is going to have a staff of seven to run it. We think the Public Service Commissioner should have a quick look at that one, and while he is doing that look at the possibility of a single body being responsible for the operation of the several stadia. (Further extension of time granted.) You might like to consider a single authority. Maybe that is the plan at Bruce. Maybe the empire has been built at Bruce already, with the seven staff, but I think the committee would like the Public Service Commissioner to have a look at that.

There is a recommendation in relation to the whole-of-government analysis of letting new contracts. The prime example is the Housing contract let to outside firms and taken away from Totalcare. The taxpayer probably loses by that. Even if there has been some monetary gain, the taxpayer will lose because of redundancies and the redundancy payments that follow.

There is a recommendation in relation to affordable housing at Kingston. That needs to be looked at again. We need to develop a social plan. That sounds like an estimates report of about two years ago, if not last year.

Recommendation 15 is about so-called funding increases. I talked about political documents earlier. The minister for health claimed that hospital funding had increased by 10 per cent budget to budget. But we know that the increase between the two years, between what will happen this year and what is intended to happen next year, is about only 4 per cent. If you factor in CPI, that is about a 1 per cent increase in real funding for the hospital from one year to the other. That is if we stay within budget, of course. You may bust budget again, Minister. You may increase it by more, but you will have to break budget to do so.

Mr Moore: You are a wanker, Ted.

MR QUINLAN: I beg your pardon?

Mr Moore: Nothing.

Mr Hargreaves: Mr Speaker, I take a point of order. I ask the minister to withdraw the comment he just made.

MR SPEAKER: I did not hear the comment.

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