Page 3893 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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You have got to question some of the commitment of the Chief Minister who I think in March said, “Climate change: it is the issue of the century.” And what are they putting in for climate change? They are putting in $836,000. So they are words; they are just words. Possibly it is the “we have abandoned our plans and we are just spending willy-nilly because we can” bill. There is this interesting line in the budget called “the future of Canberra studies”. I thought we had done this work; I thought we had a set of plans called the Canberra plan—you know, the spatial plan, the economic white paper, the social plan. The brief here says, “This initiative will provide for a series of studies to identify planning and economic development issues for the ACT and its immediate cross-border area.”
Clearly the Canberra plan has now expired and they are now starting the next series of planning for the next series of plans: “We are going to spend money looking at things we should have looked at back in 2002-03 but we didn’t, so we are going to do them in 2007-08, because we can, because we have suddenly found the money.” What it shows is that all the planning that this government have done is worthless because they have not looked at the demographics, they have not looked at the ageing population, they have not looked at the economic impact—and these are things they should have done if their plans have got any validity. That might be the reason why there are no meaningful targets or time lines in any of this government’s plans.
Of course it could definitely be characterised as the “everything we forgot to put in the original budget” bill. For example, the tourism minister is here—and he forgot to get funding for the event director: “We’re going to put on the best tourism events ever, but they didn’t tell me we needed an event director.” You are going to run an event, you are going to plan—but you have to come back to this place for $50,000 for an event director. It is illogical.
Some of these amounts are so small in terms of the budget that they should be absorbed by the departments. They could be absorbed by the departments, but, because we do not have any financial guidance from the absent Treasurer, nobody bothers. So the departments will spend everything you give them and they will surrender nothing unless you force them. What we have got is a Treasurer who is absent in his management style as much as he is absent from this place today.
Then again perhaps it is just the “I think we are hurting in the electorate and we intend to spend our way out of it” bill or what might possibly become known as the “another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, John Hargreaves, so we will just have to spend our way out of it” bill. There is a litany of mistakes from Mr Hargreaves. Members remember them: FireLink, the ESA headquarters, the Grassby statue and its comparison to the Vietnam War Memorial, Tharwa bridge, the GDE blow-out, graffiti, taxis, Griffith library closure, the Revolve debacle, no waste by 2010, shopfront closures, road funding and of course ACTION.
So not a year after they have introduced a new network they have now got to put more money back into ACTION to save it—$3.95 million. There was a great quote from Mr Corbell. He said, “We are proud of this because we want to target support in areas where it makes a difference for people in our communities. People want to see
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