Page 2692 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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It was not that long ago that five ministers was not enough. They could not do the job with five; they were under too much pressure. Now they are saying, “Actually, our team is not good enough to even fill five positions, let alone six or seven.” This is a government that could change the law with the support of either the Greens or the Liberals and actually have more than five ministers, but it is choosing to have less than five ministers.
Madam Deputy Speaker, it says a lot about the confidence that the Chief Minister has in her team. It says a lot about their forward planning that they are building a building costing at least $430 million of taxpayers’ money and they are not even planning for the simplest of changes in arrangements when they are arrangements that they have argued themselves should be in place.
I think it shows just how vacuous this government is in their approach and in their thinking. Firstly if this government were fair dinkum about not wasting taxpayers’ money, they would not be pursuing this project. If they are going to pursue this project and they were serious about it, they would be making provision for what it might be. They have not done either, and I think that that gives an insight into the way of doing business from this government.
I finish where I started. It is up to the executive to show leadership. It should show leadership before it asks Canberrans to tighten their belts, before it asks them to pay more tax, before you ask vulnerable Canberrans to cop a hit when it comes to their support and when it comes to support for kids with disabilities. This is what this government wanted to do before the massive backlash. This government wanted to strip money from kids and strip support from kids with disabilities.
Before you do that you should actually look at the far more significant savings that you could make without hurting the vulnerable. Let us start right here. Let us start with the extravagant, over-the-top, ridiculously priced $11 million that this government wants to spend on its ministerial offices. That is an extraordinary amount of money for not a lot of space, as is the $430 million for the overall project. It is far too much. It is a project that the territory cannot afford and it is a project that should be scrapped in favour of far more important projects.
As I said, we will get into the detail of this office block, but on this aspect, the government should be showing leadership. They should be showing leadership by exercising restraint. Instead, what they are doing is lavishing themselves with new offices which are over the top, over-priced and completely unnecessary.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.06): I would like to draw members’ attention to the appropriation that we just passed in relation to the Legislative Assembly where there are payments on behalf of the territory of $5,713,000, which is essentially the money set aside for the payment of the non-executive members of the Assembly, their staff, their allowances and the like. I would like to compare it with the money in this appropriation of $6,394,000 for the four or five ministers.
Just by way of comparison, the $5,700,000 in the previous appropriation was divided among 12 members at a rate of $476,000 and some change. If we are being generous
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