Page 879 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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Another part of the motion relates to good governance and value for money for the people of the ACT. Let us have a look at some of the wonderful projects that have been put forward by this government. We have seen the busway—the proposal that apparently at least initially got through cabinet for a $115 million busway—to save three minutes from Belconnen to Civic. What a stroke of genius that was to spend around $4 million of taxpayers’ money—a complete waste of money, with absolutely no justification. And we have heard what Mr Hargreaves now thinks of the busway and of the real-time information. I forget what he said; I think it was, “I’m not going to spend money on science to tell people buses are late.” I think that is a reasonable way of summing it up.
We have seen money spent on the prison—a prison that is of questionable value to the people of the ACT; a prison for which of course there will be a massive blow-out in costs; a prison that is simply not needed. But we are seeing $128 million spent on it instead of all the other priorities. We see money being spent on the arboretum and on the Grassby statue—and the list goes on.
This is an issue about accountability. This is an issue about expenditure of public funds and being able to account for that expenditure of public funds. No amount of bluster and no amount of claims of public service bashing, which we always get from this Chief Minister, will hide the fact that these are serious issues and that the Chief Minister has failed to answer the questions that are put to him. On consecutive days he has failed. It is some two months since it was first raised with him. You must question the ability of this Chief Minister to get across his brief when he cannot answer questions. We have seen him upstaged by his Deputy Chief Minister, who is able to answer some of these detailed questions.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (5.37): I stand here today to criticise the government’s failure to be open and accountable. In 2001 the Chief Minister made absolutely impressive-sounding calls to the ALP conference that when he was Chief Minister his government would be open, honest and accountable. Well, bunkum to that, because that standard plunged down the drain within five minutes of October 2001.
We have seen here today, finally, some answers being provided on the credit card issues. But it has been like pulling teeth. Some of those credit card explanations are probably absolutely spot-on. But there are still question marks over a number of them and the point is that it took the Chief Minister two or three days to even admit that something had to be responded to—something that had been brought to his attention in February of this year by the Canberra Times.
With this Chief Minister it is like pulling teeth. It is all about, “Don’t tell them what they don’t need to know or what we don’t think they need to know.” It is a “control freak” approach to government: you control the information flow; you only let that silly community out there know what you think they need to know.
Mr Seselja: And you take all the portfolios.
MR PRATT: Correct. So much for being accountable! I am going to talk a little bit later about the estimates committee. I am going to talk a little bit later too about FOI
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