Page 2925 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010
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renewal program at the other and they are shaking it furiously to create some confected outrage for themselves. It is fine for them, but it bores the rest of us, frankly. In a $4 billion budget we do not need necessarily to look at the arboretum.
Mr Seselja: Do you want to take it from roads then?
MR RATTENBURY: Just to answer Mr Seselja’s intervention—I can assure you, Mr Seselja, that if the Greens wrote this budget it would be a different budget. It would be a different budget in a whole lot of places and the money would be there for the urban tree renewal program. I can guarantee you that because the Greens believe in this program and are committed to it. So when it comes to—
Mrs Dunne: It is a hollow promise. You’re never going to deliver a budget.
MR RATTENBURY: Well, we might deliver it sooner than you do, Mrs Dunne. When it comes to the arboretum, I think there is an interesting question about what approach the Liberal Party are going to take on the arboretum. I have to confess that the arboretum is not a project that I supported at the start, but we are now in a situation where the arboretum has been rolled out. There has been substantial investment. We have got an attraction developing up there on the side of the hill that has had a lot of money invested in it and which many people, particularly in the tourism industry, are excited about. I note this particularly because in the estimates process Mr Smyth was very concerned about what attractions the government was going to establish to attract tourists to Canberra.
I am really interested to see where the Liberal Party is going to end up on the arboretum over time. Should the Liberal Party assume government in 2012, are they suddenly going to stop the arboretum? I do not know. It would be an interesting question to put to Mr Smyth. He might want to speak to that at some point. The question I have is: how long is the grudge going to be held on the arboretum? The Greens, I guess, have come to the practical view that we did lose the battle on the arboretum. Mr Stanhope has prevailed on that one and it is there now. The issue may be about when exactly we put some resources into it. Where is the Liberal Party going to stand on—
Members interjecting—
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mr Hargreaves): Order! Members of the opposition will desist, otherwise they will have their names in lights.
MR RATTENBURY: I was speaking about Mr Seselja’s passionately expressed view for saving trees. I certainly look forward to Mr Seselja joining us in the fight to protect the woodlands at Molonglo that are currently slated to have a shopping centre built on top of them. I look forward to the Liberal Party dying in a ditch with us over that set of significant and important trees that already provide substantial habitat. I was interested that Mr Stanhope felt that this was a motion directed at him—
Mrs Dunne interjecting—
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