Page 3045 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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We do not believe it is appropriate to declare this urgent. This could have been handled adequately far earlier in the piece rather than simply presenting it just before the dinner break on the final day of debate. They have not done the work; they have not got their act together; they refuse to answer a lot of our questions. And now it appears that ministers are going to be even refusing to speak to a lot of the line items. That is not a debate; that is simply pushing it through in much the same way we used to see from the majority Labor government.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (7.52): I thank Mr Corbell for moving this urgency motion tonight. I know that the Greens have proposed some time limits for each line item.
It is unfortunate that we find ourselves in this position with so much of the budget still to be debated tonight. The Greens have proposed a solution that acknowledges the desire to vote on the budget tonight while providing each party with an opportunity to record their response. If there are further matters to be recorded, I encourage parties to table a paper at the end of the night that incorporates all the speeches that have been prepared that could not be given. It is our intention that when these papers are tabled they are authorised for publication.
I will pick up on Mr Seselja’s point that unfortunately we find ourselves at 6 o’clock getting to this point. It would have been great if those more experienced members of the chamber had raised this issue earlier in the week so that we could have come up with an even better solution. The Greens are very keen to talk to both parties before the lead-up to next year’s budget so that we can come up with a better plan that will ensure that there is scrutiny and there is time to debate. That is something that we will be keen to talk to other parties about.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (7.54): It is interesting that there are 26 lines in the budget. I assume that, if we are running off this plan that has been circulated, the government will not respond to half of them—12 out of the 26, almost half of them
Ms Gallagher: Yes, because you have taken all our time up—wasting time for two days.
MR SMYTH: The Treasurer interjects that we have taken up all their time. We had half an hour in a statement from the Minister for Ageing this afternoon. I do not know about the urgency of that statement. We had all of the members—
Mr Hargreaves: We had a full hour of MPI, though.
MR SMYTH: The point is that we have often had discussions in the past. If the manager of government business cannot get his act together and come and have a chat with the other party—
Mr Hargreaves: Right.
MR SMYTH: It is your business we are doing. You are the one that complains. You are the one that complains that on government business day you never get to do any
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