Page 2899 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
But let us have a look at what has been delivered in the ACT in recent years, just to give you a sense of how extravagant this spend is. The Health building, 46,000 square metres, just a little smaller than what the government wants to deliver, cost $190 million. The Australian tax office building of 60,000 square metres cost $230 million. DEEWR, at 39,000 square metres, cost $170 million.
So taxpayers are being asked to pay for the most expensive government office building that has ever been delivered in the ACT—most expensive building on a square metre basis. It will be unrivalled in the amount they are spending on standard government office buildings.
What are the alternatives? The alternatives are: you could focus on the real infrastructure needs of the people of the ACT; you could focus on actually making the lives of Canberrans better—having better roads, having better sporting facilities, having better educational facilities, having better health facilities—but instead this government wants to waste $430 million.
They want to do it, having not done the proper analysis. They want to do it, based on dodgy assumptions and dodgy savings that do not exist and do not even stand up to the most basic of scrutiny. This is a project that is poorly thought through and will cost taxpayers far too much.
I did want to talk a little about the government’s supermarket policy because it does appear to be falling apart, and falling apart at a pretty rapid rate. This is the policy, of course, just to remind people, where the government picks winners. This is the supermarket policy where the government says, “We pick supermarkets.” It is not “We will go into bat for small independents over Woolworths and Coles.” It is “We will pick one supermarket outlet in order for them to become a third force.” It is interesting that your pick-the-winners policy has failed when even the winners are criticising it. I read this week an article by John Thistleton in the Canberra Times:
Retailers fear the ACT’s supermarket policy is failing after the announcement that Woolworths will build its biggest territory store at Canberra Airport.
It also said:
Supabarn is among retailers which believe the Government’s supermarket competition policy to curb Coles’ and Woolworths’ dominance of the Canberra market is a dud.
That it is; it is a dud. They have chosen, through their supermarket policy, to exclude local IGAs, to exclude other independents, bidding for sites, for no rationale other than the vague possibility that we could get another wholesale business established in Canberra. That is not happening. It is not happening and it has failed. And even Supabarn, who has been a beneficiary of this policy, is now saying that the policy of picking winners of the Labor government is a dud. That does sum up this government’s approach to business and its approach to industry development. Maybe now that we have got a different minister, we could hear an explanation why this government would not actually try to encourage as much competition as possible.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video