Page 1201 - Week 04 - Thursday, 17 March 2005
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took millions and millions of dollars worth of consultancies, made lots and lots of promises and has delivered absolutely nothing.
I will give two examples that need to be looked at. The first of these is that, when you get past all the platitudes of this government, it is a government that has abandoned industry. Let us look at the IT industry. In the white paper, at the top of their list of examples of things that they think are good for Canberra, they have IT—information and communication technology. It is not in alphabetical order, so one assumes these are the sectors that will be targeted.
Mr Quinlan talked recently about a centre of excellence. Perhaps he had forgotten about the centre of excellence the taxation office wanted to put together—and it was put together. The project was run out of Canberra. These are people who live in Canberra and who want to see jobs in Canberra, who want to keep them here for their kids into the future, you would assume, but they could not find 100 qualified people to fill those jobs. That is because this government, under this Treasurer, has absolutely abandoned the IT sector.
The Treasurer is also the tourism minister. Look at the shocking tourism figures for the last quarter—down 22 per cent. To quote a survey, tourists have shunned the nation’s capital, with about 120,000 overnight domestic visitors turning their backs on the ACT during the December quarter last year. This Treasurer has failed the economy.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of the Opposition’s time has expired.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella) (4.45): Mr Mulcahy and the Treasurer have both made passing reference to the opposition’s approach to financial management in the last election campaign. Their legacy, a litany of unfounded promises, has been mentioned in this place before. But it is worth repeating: years of cost-budget blowouts on the V8 supercar race, set inappropriately in the middle of winter; a commitment to construct a jail at the cost of $110 million, with no funding provided in the budget; a remand centre in desperate need of replacing; the morale-sapping nurses dispute; the commitment to a Canberra medical school, with the unrealistic expectation that the operating costs could be absorbed within the Department of Health and Community Care; disability services; the state of the Totalcare quarry; the additional capital requirements for TransACT; and the unfounded costs of information technology.
While a number of these projects are very worth while—and this government has proceeded to implement them—what sets this government apart from the previous is its commitment to provide the funding. The funding for these initiatives has been included in our budget. It is a good thing that the ACT community did vote like their life depended on it; it is a good thing the opposition does not have its hand on the tiller now that the national economic cycle is turning and the ACT will come under increasing budgetary pressure. Would we see needless expenditure on imported grass or, in celebrating today’s Irish day, some extra spending on green paint?
Mr Deputy Speaker, we have spoken about the extent to which the ACT finances are dependent on the commonwealth government’s decisions. The ACT budget is under pressure from the commonwealth’s current approach to specific revenue assistance, national competition policy payments and specific purpose payments. The Australian
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