Page 1439 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2006
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does not necessarily think it is the wrong thing to do. Look at the front page of last week’s Chronicle and you will see Mr Seselja out there with a group of parents at Narrabundah looking very sad and concerned. I wonder if he has told them that he thinks that it is not necessarily a bad idea to close schools. I wonder if he has told them that. I wonder if he told the Chronicle that. I do not think so. There is a bit of flipping and flopping from Mr Seselja. It is the Steve Pratt/Zed Seselja flip-flop. There is hypocrisy and double standards from the other side of the chamber on that issue as well.
Mr Mulcahy’s motion fails to have regard to a whole range of other factors that are quite rightly addressed in the Chief Minister’s amendment. Those include the fact that this government has delivered four straight budget surpluses. They do not like talking about that, and I noticed the deafening silence on the other side of the chamber when I mentioned that. Where is the acknowledgement, the recognition of those four straight budget surpluses? Of course there is none, because it does not suit the crisis theory, crisis rhetoric and revved-up argument that we hear from those opposite.
The bottom line is that the government maintains, on behalf of the territory, a strong credit rating. The government is committed to maintaining that credit rating in full. When members see the budget in about a month’s time, they will see the outcomes of the government’s moves to ensure that the credit rating is maintained in full. We regard that as important and as a strong indicator of the strength of the territory’s balance sheet and its overall economic management.
The other issue that is worth addressing in debating this motion today is the element that the Liberal Party are always a bit weak on—in fact, always very weak on. Mr Pratt talks about the need to spend more money, say, on police. Mr Seselja talks about the need to spend more money on schooling. Mrs Burke is out there saying that we have to spend more money on housing. Mr Smyth says that we have to spend more money on health; we have to make sure that we have a hundred more hospital beds. That is Mr Smyth’s claim, and very proudly made.
They assert the need for increased expenditure and then their Treasury spokesperson comes out and says we are spending too much money. They cannot have it both ways. They cannot argue publicly about the need to massively increase expenditure on health or education or housing or police without recognising the impact that will have on the budget bottom line. They cannot then assert that the government is spending in a wilful or profligate manner. They cannot do that if they themselves make demand after demand for increased levels of expenditure. But that is exactly what they do. It is hypocritical, it is contradictory and it demonstrates that they have no clear agenda for what they would do if they were ever in the very fortunate—and I say “very fortunate”—position of being in government.
Let us look at the areas where this Liberal Party failed to deliver for the people of Canberra and where the ACT Labor government has had to address the shortfalls. Let us look at the issues, and I will only mention a couple because of limited time. But let us look at the issue of emergency services, which is the issue that Mr Pratt and Mr Smyth and others have made great hay of. What level of funding did they provide to the Emergency Services Bureau when they were in office? What did they do in the area of bushfire prevention? Did they spend money on maintaining fire trails in the national park? No. Did they spend money on even providing basic personal protective equipment
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