Page 535 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 10 February 2009
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the ACT economy and perhaps also on the ACT budget. I will do what I can to provide members with all the details that I get in a very timely fashion, if they are feeling that the budget papers are too long away. We are currently putting the budget together now anyway, but I will look at what information I can provide. I would say that the briefing provided yesterday was at our initiation, and the response to that briefing and to our offer of assistance and the way it has been treated certainly makes it seem like it is not worth going to the effort to provide you with that kind of high-level briefing, considering you have obviously got nothing out of it.
The package that has been delivered—there may be some changes and amendments to that package, as we have heard today on the news—must be dealt with quickly. That package must pass so that the money can flow and that the benefits that we hope to see across the country and here—of course, we are focused on the ACT—will occur as soon as possible.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.17): I welcome the opportunity to speak to this matter of public importance. It is a very important issue. I think the first thing I need to say—Mr Smyth has already touched on this—is that there are lots of good things in this package. We were really pleased to see the insulation program. That is something that we took to the last election. Of course we support it. We put it out there in about September or October of last year, and we support it. It is good economic policy, and it is good environmental policy. It is also good social policy. We are committed to it. The Labor government here was not prepared to match it.
It is interesting to consider the commentary from the Chief Minister when that part of the package was announced. He must be applying for some sort of post-politics job, because anything that comes from Kevin Rudd now is good. He may have opposed it before; he may not have been prepared to support it, but he was gushing in his praise of Kevin Rudd the other day on the radio. He was talking about what a visionary, nation-building plan this was. Well, we believe that there are good aspects, and who is going to say no to money for school halls?
In fact, the Treasurer still forgets. She said, “Who doesn’t support extra money for schools?” Well, I think it was Kevin Rudd who actually cut the last program. There was a major investing in our schools program from the previous Howard government, and Kevin Rudd cut it. He got rid of it. He abolished it when he came in. This government, the ACT Labor Party, supported that. They did not oppose it. They supported him getting rid of it. That is what we have seen from this government. If it is from Kevin Rudd, it is good; if it is from the previous government, it is bad.
We also do need to go to the point of Senate scrutiny. The Chief Minister and others have put forward the argument that you have to, without looking at this package and without examining it, pass it, and anyone who refuses to pass it, not having seen it, is somehow not acting in the best interests of the nation. It is a ridiculous argument; it does not bear any reasonable, rational scrutiny.
Of course, we know why they did not want scrutiny in the briefing, and it came through in Ms Gallagher’s answers today. We saw Ms Gallagher not knowing any of the details. She did not know any of the details, and we can go through them. We asked her in question time about the economic impact:
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