Page 169 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010

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MR BARR: Governments are from time to time, when circumstances change, able to change their policy position.

MR SPEAKER: Ms Bresnan, a supplementary question?

MS BRESNAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. How was the public notified of this proposed technical variation throughout the consultation period last year?

MR BARR: By the usual mechanisms the Planning and Land Authority undertakes for technical variations. I understand that there was information on the website. There was a media release and there was a notice published in the Canberra Times and I think also in the Chronicle.

MR SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Hunter?

MS HUNTER: Considering that you have changed your policy position on this, did you take into account events or services that might be affected by only having a 25-metre pool in Deakin?

MR BARR: Yes.

Budget—deficit

MR SMYTH: My question is to the Treasurer. Treasurer, yesterday in question time you referred to a report and quoted from a Canberra Times article which said that the ACT economy was one of the two best-performing economies in Australia. You failed to mention, however, that the same report from CommSec concluded that the ACT economy has been insulated from the US financial crisis.

Treasurer, your government has budgeted for four years of deficit and expects deficits to continue until 2015-16. Treasurer, how can you claim that the ACT’s budgetary situation is the result of the global financial crisis when a report, on which you look with favour, concludes that the ACT economy has been insulated from the US financial crisis?

MS GALLAGHER: We have the GFC denial from over that side. It never happened. You never saw it. They were not there. No, they never saw it.

Mr Smyth: CommSec is wrong?

MS GALLAGHER: No. Look at it in the context in which those comments were made. Mr Smyth is trying to argue that we have been insulated from the GFC right down, that we have been insulated from the collapse of the financial market, that we have been insulated from the changes to monetary policy.

Are you serious, Mr Smyth? It is almost as good as your leader putting a question on notice asking me how much money we get from the commonwealth in payroll tax. That is about as funny as it gets, I think. Albeit, you were away—I think you were


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