Page 3469 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010

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Yesterday, as I said, I brought forward an MPI on the public service and the importance of public service employment to the ACT, to ACT families—the importance of them having employment to be able to purchase homes, feed and clothe their children and do all of the things that we want for a good life for our children: to have stable employment, to have certainty in employment. I put that forward.

I did have to leave early, and I do apologise for that. Early on Monday, I requested from the Chief Minister’s office a briefing on the bridge collapse. This is a significant event in the ACT. We do need to ensure that there are investigations, and there are. There are investigations underway at the moment to find out what happened there. We have had 15 workers injured—nine who went to hospital and two who are still in hospital. This was a critical incident, a significant incident that happened over the weekend, which is why I contacted the Chief Minister’s office to request a briefing. I did that on Monday. That briefing was set up for 4.30 yesterday, and it was important that I attended. In no way should anyone take from that that I did not think that the matter of public importance was important: it was; we know how critical it is. It was an unfortunate clash of timetables where I did need to attend that incredibly important briefing that was also attended by my colleague Caroline Le Couteur and three members of the Liberal Party. (Time expired.)

MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (11.00): All is now revealed for us—the true agenda of the Greens. You can make the big lie, you can use the big numbers and you can put things out there that are not true just to attack the Liberal Party. We have just heard from Ms Hunter about how dreadful it will be when these proposed jobs that will go through natural attrition are lost to the ACT, but we never heard a word from the Greens when the Gillard-Rudd government was cutting the ACT—not a word, nary a word. It is that level of hypocrisy, that the people of the ACT are very good at smelling out, that will not stand the Greens in good stead.

We have got the big lie now: 30,000 jobs are going. We have got a report. But Ms Hunter just said that the proposed job losses in Canberra will be 3,076 and in Fraser 2,700. That is not 30,000 jobs. Even if you double that and make it 12,000, that is not 30,000 jobs. So Lin Hatfield Dodds is out there, having lost 18,000 jobs. These are not our numbers. These, I understand, are from the Australia Institute. Somebody said Lin Hatfield Dodds is attached to the board of the Australia Institute.

So you have got the big lie. If you put it in your ads and your press releases and say it often enough, you will believe it; you convince yourself that you are right. What you are after is not the wellbeing of the people of the ACT. What you are after is control of the Senate and the Greens agenda that will lead to increased costs for Canberra families. We have just had it from Ms Hunter. She will not tell you who will pay for all these policies. She will not tell you who will pay off the debt. She will not tell you who will pay off the deficit, but she will tell you that there are 30,000 jobs going.

There are not 30,000 jobs going. By her own numbers, she has just exposed Lin Hatfield Dodds in her own party for what can only be called the crassest example of hypocrisy that we have seen in this campaign—30,000 jobs. It is the big lie. You say it often enough and people will believe it. What the Leader of the Opposition has


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