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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2085 ..

MR SPEAKER: You have another 10 minutes.

MR HARGREAVES: I am aware of the second 10 minutes. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. What happens? They say, "We will call it a pilot, and then we don't have to do it." Pilots very rarely spread over two years and end up with a full-on program, Mr Speaker. I think this was just smoke and mirrors stuff to get out of the tender process. I do not accept for one minute that the government could not have gone out into the marketplace and asked those people who provide these services, "Can you do it according to these specifications?" They could have done it in a trice, Mr Speaker. The thing was that the money became available too close to the end of the financial year. They did not have the time to do it, so they thought they would try to slide this one through, and maybe no-one would notice. Wrong again, Mr Speaker.

Let's have a look at the initiatives, the spending spree, the wish list, the shopping list. If one looks at some of the justice ones, these are not initiatives. These are not something new. There are at least three in there, on page 88 of Budget Paper No 3, which are merely pay rises for statutory officeholders. They are extra money for resources for the Police Ombudsman and extra money for the Government Solicitor's Office because they worked so hard bailing this government out of things like the hospital implosion, Hall/Kinlyside and the range of other issues that we can rattle off which the voters will be treated to a list of during the election campaign.

These things are not initiatives. They are merely extra payments that the government would have to meet as part of its normal housekeeping. If you trot down to the old supermarket, Mr Speaker, and find that your favourite brand of baked beans has gone up, you just have to pay it. The same story here, Mr Speaker, with the Government Solicitor's Office. As the Deputy Clerk would know, if his fees for the Magpies supporters club go up he willingly sticks his hand in his pocket, Mr Speaker, pulls out his money, takes one look at St Kilda's supporters, says bad luck and pays it. I am saying this government should just say bad luck and pay it. They should not stick it in here under the guise of an initiative, because it certainly is not that.

Mr Speaker, later on we will talk about this free bus scheme. One fellow came up to me at the Lanyon marketplace and said, "I'm really in favour of this free bus scheme because it is going to save me heaps of money." I said, "Oh, really. How about if we give the money inside the school gate and use it on educational aspects?" Then he told me why. He is paying a bucket full of money to send his kids from Conder to the Torrens Primary School. That was because the educational outcome for his kids was not being met by the open class arrangements at Charles Conder or Gordon. He said his kids reacted very well to a traditional class arrangement. I thought, "Good on him. He has made that educational choice to send his kids off to Torrens Primary School."

I said, "How many people in your boat do you think there are?" He said, "There are 37 children in Conder going to Torrens Primary School." I said, "Well, what if the minister, in his goodness and largesse, for which he is well renowned, was to put on a dedicated school bus from the Lanyon marketplace to take the kids from Conder and deposit them in the Torrens Primary School so that they did not have to cross that busy Athllon Drive in peak hour after school?" He said, "Mate, if they did that, that would be fabulous. I don't need the free school bus system. I would happily pay it. It's the fact that the poor kids have got to change buses."

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