Page 4502 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 23 November 2005
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budgets. ASIO is increasing by 24.8 per cent as a result of the commonwealth’s efforts in countering terrorist activity.
The ACT and Mr Quinlan have been able to go some way towards addressing the overspend by the government through the additional funds that were received, $39.4 million, in GST revenue under this budget. If there had not been a GST introduced, the ACT would be getting about $98 million less than it currently receives, based on the guaranteed minimum amount.
There are so many developments going on that are related to commonwealth activity: $9.5 million on the fit-out of AusAid; $132.6 million over four years on the construction and fit-out for ASIO; $41.2 million at the Royal Mint; $89 million through the refurbishment of Anzac Park east and west; a $70 million upgrade at the Australian Institute of Sport, which will strengthen Australia’s capacity in the world of sport, particularly as we lead up to the 2008 Olympic Games; over $20 million this year in the redevelopment project to refurbish facilities at the Bruce campus. We have also heard that the commonwealth is planning to spend about $318 million building a new joint defence headquarters at Bungendore. It seems that the role of the commonwealth cannot be underestimated in terms of this territory.
The Chief Minister is incredibly sensitive to this criticism and darted off down all sorts of roads, saying that he has to take these positions of principle. I do not believe that you have to be sycophantic; I do not think that you have to agree with everything the commonwealth has done.
In fact, I will share with my colleagues opposite that I have been very critical of the commonwealth on industrial relations reforms. I have been critical of the way in which they marketed some of that information. I am happy to share that with you. I have told them that it took a disproportionate amount of time to get out that message on the strengths and benefits of that reform program so that the people of Canberra would understand, through the misinformation promoted by the ACTU and some of my colleagues opposite, that their livelihoods were not being threatened. I have been strident in telling Mr Andrews that they needed to do a better job there.
I do not mind; I am happy to criticise them if they have dropped the ball in a particular area. But I do not make my livelihood by declaring war on every single thing the commonwealth does. I know Mr Stanhope considers that he is intellectually superior to all the rest of us and the people of Canberra and that we should defer to his view on any matter in the world, but the fact of the matter is that is not a view that seems to be shared by the other state Labor premiers and it is not a view shared by many in the commonwealth.
Mr Quinlan says I am doing a disservice to my colleagues federally. I do not think I am. In fairness, I do not really hear them talk too much about Mr Quinlan, except when I catch up with a few of his federal Labor colleagues and they have a few comments to make. Basically, the concern I have is the one that I keep hearing: that people find the ACT government’s strident opposition on all these different issues puzzling and bizarre. It troubles me—and I would not have raised this if I had not heard it so often—that the troubling and bizarre observation will gradually move to a point of such irritation that regard will be given to demands for expenditure and employment in other environments.
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