Page 1331 - Week 05 - Thursday, 31 May 2007
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The planning minister at the time said it could well go ahead in 2006, but now the Chief Minister tells us it was really just a long-term planning exercise—a $4 million long-term planning exercise. The government felt the need to market the project and to say, “It may well go ahead as of 2006, but really it was a long-term planning exercise.” It is a $4 million waste of money. It has been an absolute waste of money.
We are going to see $128 million spent on a prison that we do not need—and we know that is the capital cost. The government tell us that it will cost only $20 million a year to run, or it will not cost more than we currently pay in recurrent expenditure to New South Wales. But we know that the ACT government currently pay $200 a day to New South Wales and $450 a day to keep people at Belconnen Remand Centre. That is how they manage things. So the ACT community could have no confidence whatsoever that $20 million is going to be the end of it. It simply will not be. I make this prediction now: the government will blow that recurrent expenditure; we will be paying more in recurrent expenditure as a result of building this prison than we pay now for corrective services. You can guarantee it.
How do we know that? W know it because we have seen this government in every area fail to rein in their spending. We see the legacy projects like the arboretum. We saw the Chief Minister be astounded—shock, horror—that there are 2,300 extra public servants. This is how this government have managed. They have failed to rein in spending at the end of about 15 years of economic boom, after massive extra revenue. This government have not delivered and at the end of this period they are raising our taxes, closing our schools and have failed to provide the crucial infrastructure needs for the future of this territory. They stand condemned, and I thank Ms Porter for bringing this matter of public importance forward.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.49): I am indebted to Mr Corbell for making the analogy of the drover’s dog—“a drover’s dog could have organised the economic goodness that blesses Australia today”. Well, if a drover’s dog can do it in Australia, why isn’t it happening in economies like Germany, Japan and the USA?
We have had something like 50 quarters of economic growth. That is an outstanding effort. So, if the economic performance of John Howard and his government is the economic performance of a drover’s dog, what does that make Mr Stanhope’s performance? It is kind of hard to come up with an analogy. The only one I can think of is a cat. Jon Stanhope often behaves like a cat: if you do not pay him attention, if you do not stroke him, he gets a bit scratchy and a bit snitchy and I am reminded of that song about a dead cat in the middle of the road, stinking to high heaven. That represents the economic performance of the ACT Labor Stanhope government. It stinks because it is a marvel of ineptitude and missed opportunity.
On the one hand the Howard government this year has delivered a $10 billion surplus—a $10 billion surplus after 11 years in office and having come through, unscathed, the HIH collapse, the Ansett collapse, the Asian meltdown, all the troubles in Russia, the SARS epidemic and September 11. It has been able to help the growth of the new nation of Timor Leste, efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, $1 billion in humanitarian aid for the victims of the tsunami—and still it can deliver record economic growth and record surpluses, with unemployment at its lowest for 32 years
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