Page 2865 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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What have we seen here today? This motion is an important motion. It was a test of the new regime under Katy Gallagher. Mr Seselja, from the outset, said that, if Ms Gallagher wants to show that she is about openness and accountability, the test for her will be the release of particular documents. He made these comments some time ago when the Chief Minister started talking about openness and accountability. So we bring it in here and we put them to the test.
Gallagher and Hunter together, the Gallagher-Hunter government, have failed the test of openness and accountability—as Mr Seselja has rightly said, and has been saying at length. It is interesting that Ms Hunter is in here today making this speech, because there is now a huge rift between what was said by Mr Rattenbury back in 2009-10 and what is being said here today. Mr Rattenbury was highly critical of the result of the process that Ms Hunter put in place in relation to the Costello report, and said so in here, to the huge fury of the Attorney-General, who accused him of all sorts of bad faith at the time. But here we have a much more compliant member today. The result of that compliance is that Ms Hunter and Ms Gallagher have let down the people of the ACT. This was a test for Ms Gallagher. She has failed—a big fat F for openness and accountability at her first test.
As Mr Seselja has rightly said, according to all that has been said by the government, the Costello report was the bible by which the 2006 budget cabinet made a whole range of decisions that affected the community in a multitude of ways. The most obvious and the most painful way was the closing of schools. But there were a range of revenue measures that slowly and gradually ate into the daily and fortnightly incomes of the people of the ACT. Every time you increase charges by WPI rather than CPI, that makes a big impact, and that compounds year after year after year. And the justification for that is hidden in the Costello report.
The ACT government made substantial changes to superannuation entitlements for their employees. The justification for that is in the Costello report, or so we have been told. Mr Seselja is correct to say that a whole lot has been laid at the foot of Mr Costello—“We are doing this because we were advised to by the Costello inquiry.” The people of the ACT cannot know whether that is correct or not. We do not know whether Mr Costello should be blamed for the closures of the schools. We do not know whether Mr Costello should be blamed for decisions in relation to WPI versus CPI or in relation to cutting superannuation entitlements. When all the debate in the country is about increasing superannuation to increase independence for people’s retirement years, this government was cutting it back.
These are the issues that were laid at Mr Costello’s feet. We also do not know, as Mr Seselja said, what else he suggested—whether he really did suggest the closing of quite so many schools or what was the nature of that. And when he was suggesting the closure of a certain number of schools, did he also say, “By the way, while you are saving in the outyears, when you get it all together, about $15 million, how about you go out and spend $350 million elsewhere in the education system?” These are the things that have never been scrutinised by the people of the ACT. These are the things that the people of the ACT want answers about.
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