Page 523 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 8 March 2011

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for bus seats. In the last budget there was a significant injection of millions of dollars in relation to public transport for additional bus seats, bus stations, park and ride, bike parks, street lighting and enhanced paths, on-road bus lanes—indeed, an overall package just in the last budget of somewhere in the order of $100 million to meet the commitments that we made in relation to public transport, bicycle paths and an enhanced commitment to ensuring that we achieve the sort of modal shift that we have committed to under our sustainable transport plan.

We made a whole range of commitments in relation to sport and recreation. We committed to the smart start program—$800,000 over four years—and it has been done. We committed to a children’s activity foundation, and it has been done. We committed to a major upgrade of the Woden Valley Gymnastics Club, and I had the great pleasure just two weeks ago of opening that $1 million extension to the Woden Valley Gymnastics Club. I have to say that it was very pleasing to see how that upgrade will significantly enhance gymnastic opportunities for children most particularly in the ACT. We committed to provide $3 million for a new basketball stadium and player amenity, and we have funded that commitment.

We made, as always in the context of our most important commitments—those to health and the health status—a raft of promises in relation to our commitment to health and our guarantee that we will maintain the ACT as the leading provider of health and the jurisdiction or the system that provides the best health outcomes of any place anywhere in Australia. In relation to health, we more than met every one of our commitments, most particularly in relation to the decisions that we have taken in relation to the capital asset development program, a massive rebuild and reinvestment in health and health care and in our hospitals.

Contrast that, of course, to perhaps one of the most infamous of the Liberal Party’s promises when in government, a promise that I remember distinctly. The then Chief Minister, Mrs Carnell, made a promise to increase the number of public hospital beds from around 500 and something to 1,000 in the term of the government from, I think, the 1998 election. She promised to increase the number of hospital beds from 500 and something to 1,000. Over the course of that term, of course, the Liberal Party, we now know, cut the number of beds by 114. There was this fantastic promise that the then Liberal Party made in relation to health in relation to hospital beds, most specifically to increase them to 1,000, and they cut them by 114. We will be happy, of course, at any time to debate our election commitments in relation to health and the election commitments which the Liberal Party made when they were in government. I am more than happy to have this opportunity—(Time expired.)

MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (3.55): I think it is timely that we have this debate in the Assembly, given the national environment and given the local environment. I will focus for a moment on what is going on nationally and the performance of the Labor Party and the Greens in honouring promises before I turn to the broken promises of ACT Labor. It is hard to imagine a more significant broken promise than the promise that there will be no carbon tax under a government Julia Gillard leads, when only months after the election it is announced that, in fact, there will be a carbon tax under a government Julia Gillard leads. One of the greatest broken promises—


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