Page 3206 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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MR SESELJA: I could not quite hear the interjection there from Ms Gallagher; perhaps she can speak up if she wants to stand by her interjections.
The Labor Party and the Greens are going to be voting for a budget that delivers horrific Indigenous funding, according to Mr Terry Williams. According to Mr Terry Williams, the Indigenous funding in the ACT by this government is horrific. And the ACT Labor Party and the ACT Greens will be voting for a budget that delivers that. You do ask the question with the Greens whether they bothered to do anything about it. They do have a significant negotiating position, one would have thought, yet they are going to be just simply voting for a budget which Terry Williams says is horrific. I think it has been pointed out before that no-one could accuse Terry Williams of having some conservative political agenda, out to get the Labor government, out to get the Greens. I do not think that is the case. I think, again, he is calling it as he sees it.
What we are going to see tonight is that the Labor Party and the Greens will be supporting that funding. They believe that that funding that Mr Williams has referred to as horrific is worth voting for and is worth supporting. You do ask the question: what are they actually getting? What are the Greens actually getting?
I will just finish by saying that Mr Hargreaves’s comments are interesting in a week where we have seen the Chief Minister and the Labor Party acting as an opposition; acting as really the worst type of opposition, which is opposing something because it was not their idea, when it comes to roadside drug testing—opposing it on spurious human rights grounds because it was not their idea and maybe because it does not meet their philosophical agenda. They cannot quite decide which it is.
Mr Hargreaves is saying to us that we should be giving the government a plug. I did not hear Mr Hargreaves being critical of the government at all in his address. Apparently, according to him, the budget is perfect. So I guess the horrific levels of funding he is comfortable with; he is comfortable with the claims of institutionalised abuse from kinship carers that have not been addressed, that have not been dealt with. So we see that for what it is: the ramblings of a former minister who has shown his sensitivity tonight. He has shown his sensitivity today. He says it is like water off a duck’s back. But I think we all saw today that that is indeed not the case.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (11:04): Mr Hargreaves in his little rant—it is interesting when you accuse people of doing things, then you stand and do it yourself—said that there had not been a single policy response from the Liberals in this portfolio, yet I draw his attention to the fact that we announced that we would conduct a childcare sector audit so that we could actually find out what was happening in childcare services, because the government is not going to do it, and that the policy would, therefore, result in a childcare master plan and then a centralised waiting list for all Canberran families. So, before you get up and shoot your mouth off, you should check your facts, because you embarrass yourself and you embarrass your party when you do not get it right. There is a lot of embarrassment on the other side of the chamber this evening.
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