Page 525 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 8 March 2011
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Mr Stanhope: Surely this motion is not about a price on carbon.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: I have ruled. The question is the importance of governments keeping election promises. There is no reference to the ACT. If you interject on this point of order again, I will have to consider that you are being disorderly. Mr Seselja has the floor.
MR SESELJA: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I was talking about the Treasurer, because the Treasurer has endorsed it. And you have got to ask why. Why would you endorse the breaking of promises which you do not even know the implications of? That is what we saw today. The Chief Minister is very keen for us to talk about the Treasurer, and I am very happy to talk about the Treasurer and her record of breaking promises. The record of broken promises—
Government members interjecting—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Order, members of the government!
MR SESELJA: It is embarrassing when you go back and look.
Mr Stanhope interjecting—
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MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Stanhope, if you interject again, I will warn you.
MR SESELJA: We could go back to the last election when she claimed all her plans were on the table when it came to health. That was not true. In fact, there were secret plans—secret failed plans, as it turns out. The great reformer Katy Gallagher had secret plans to buy Calvary hospital. Now, that fell over as soon as there was some light shed on that deal. They wanted to waste $77 million of taxpayers’ money when it turns out that apparently they own it. We have “all our plans are on the table”, but in fact Katy Gallagher was negotiating a secret deal that would have seen the ACT government throw away $77 million.
That is just the latest. But because the Chief Minister is so keen for us to talk about the Treasurer’s record, it is worth going back just a little bit further to look at the issue of broken promises. We go back before the 2004 election when we had Ms Gallagher talking about school closures—a serious issue, an important issue, an issue of public concern before the election. This is what Katy Gallagher had to say on it on 11 August 2004. She said that at some stage in the future the community will have to have a conversation about this—old schools, new schools—and what they want from the future. We had that report on 11 August, and people got a bit worried that maybe she had left open the possibility of closing schools.
So then she went on to make it absolutely clear, in a similar way to Ms Gillard making it absolutely clear before the election that there would be no carbon tax under her government. What did Katy Gallagher say? The government will not be closing schools. That was before the election.
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