Page 2230 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Pratt!
MR STANHOPE: The largest annual capital budget under the previous Liberal government was $89 million, of which they delivered about $60 million. That is where we were. That was the mindset. That was the thinking under the previous government. The largest single capital budget that they budgeted for, I understand, was $89 million. In the last financial year, this government delivered a capital spend of $340 million on the ground in a capital program of over $400 million. The previous government, in their biggest ever year delivered $60 million, I think.
We would not even be having this conversation but for the work that this government has done to secure our balance sheet and to provide the capacity to debate what we will invest in now with the enormous capacity that we have—that is, the capacity to actually deliver a billion-dollar infrastructure program over the next five years. We have a $1.5 billion infrastructure capital program.
Children—protection
MR STEFANIAK: My question is to the Minister for Children and Young People. Minister, the Canberra Times reported that an assessment of the Ainslie house was done by your department four days before the police intervened. Minister, could you inform the Assembly what this assessment was and how it differed from the police assessment?
MR SPEAKER: I am a little troubled that, if we start delving into an assessment of what the police assessment meant, we could fall foul of the sub judice rule, because this will be evidence which is going to be led in the courts. Mr Stefaniak, I just caution you about the line that you are taking with the questioning, particularly in trying to have a comparison with the police assessment, which I think invites the minister to tell you what the police assessment was.
MR STEFANIAK: She can certainly answer the first part, even on your ruling, in terms of what was the assessment that was made four days before the police assessment. I leave it to the minister to answer in relation to the police assessment. She can perhaps—
Ms Gallagher: I can’t.
MR STEFANIAK: She cannot touch it or she can say something more generally.
MR SPEAKER: You should not ask it either.
MR STEFANIAK: I think we get a bit precious about the sub judice rule. Certainly I would like her to tell us what the assessment that her department made was. There is nothing wrong with that.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Stefaniak, you accuse me of being a little precious.
MR STEFANIAK: No, I am not accusing you at all.
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