Page 874 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 24 February 2009
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I find it particularly amazing how arrogant this Chief Minister is in creating a distraction on this when you have 39 families that have signed up to this scheme, with good intentions; they have signed up to this scheme, wanting a house; they have signed up to this scheme, wanting to better their lives for their children. And here we are, eight months later, with a government so arrogant that they will not even acknowledge that things are not going according to plan. I find that absolutely staggering. Then again, that is pretty indicative of what this rock-show government is all about. This Labor government has let down so many families and this is yet another example where he refuses to actually take responsibility for his actions.
What I find particularly amazing is that, when it comes to the banks, when it comes to those great banks which we have heard the Treasurer rip into—we have heard the Treasurer rip into banks about the financial crisis—here we are, we have the Chief Minister trying to be a good corporate citizen and failing to be a good Canberra citizen, trying to be a good corporate citizen and protect his powers in the banking industry and he will not give away the name of a corporation that may give finance to a scheme like this. Yet he expects me to give the names and addresses of people that have contacted my office about a scheme that the government has set up and that is not going to plan, trying to buck-pass its scheme onto a failure of ours.
I think the people of Canberra expect better than that. I think the people of Canberra, when they voted at the last election, did not expect that they would sign up to a government scheme that would so grossly let them down. Regardless of what scepticism there is of government generally in our society, I think there is usually some sort of a sense of security that you get when you sign up to a government program that you are not going to be ripped off, that you are not going to be rorted.
Mr Corbell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I appreciate this has been a wide-ranging debate but at some point I would anticipate that Mr Coe would actually address the terms of the motion before us, which is that he provide to the Chief Minister before the close of business today the names and addresses of those who have complained to him about the ACT government land rent scheme. We have heard this broad commentary about what he thinks about this government and so on but he does at some point during the debate need to address the substantive terms of the motion before him and I ask you to draw his attention to that.
Mr Seselja: On the point of order, Mr Speaker: Mr Coe has directly dealt with the motion, in particular about providing names and addresses. He has made a contrast. I also want to make the point that the Chief Minister had a fair bit of latitude in his speech in terms of the land rent scheme overall.
MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order. I think the Chief Minister was fairly wide ranging as well.
MR COE: I do not think, when people sign up to a government scheme, they would expect to be ripped off, would expect to be rorted, would expect to be let down. I am not saying all of that is true of this particular scheme, except I think you could categorically say that there are some people out there that feel pretty let down. Even Mr Dawes has said as much when he said that people are feeling pretty frustrated.
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