Page 4612 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 19 October 2011

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in particular, to the Treasurer and the Chief Minister, Katy Gallagher.” The ineptitude continues.

We have this vacillating now from Mr Barr. “Well, maybe I will go and test the market. Perhaps the market can tell me how much I get it for when I have already given them the answer. The base price is $432 million. Let the market absorb that and tell me what they could do it for.” Great! Put it out on the table, then you change your mind, then you change your mind back. The reality is they are not going to change their mind; that is why they should be held to account today. The third-party insurance policy should be called in.

MR SPEAKER: Your time has expired Mr Smyth. Thank you, sit down. Mr Smyth!

MR SMYTH: This motion should be supported by the majority of the Assembly—

MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, sit down.

MR SMYTH: Well, yes, “Sit down,” that is right.

MR SPEAKER: Your time had expired Mr Smyth. Let us not make this an issue. Mr Coe, you have—

Mr Smyth interjecting—

MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, you are pushing your luck. Mr Coe, you have the floor.

MR COE (Ginninderra) (10.42): Once again the Liberals are in this place trying to bring some order to the public accounts of the ACT government. Once again we have an example of where the ACT Labor Party, with the entrenched support of the crossbench—the Greens—are flippantly spending $430 million to suit their ideological agenda. We have $432 million being spent on something which is not a priority, which is not something the average Canberran wants to see.

In fact, $432 million works out to $1,250 or thereabouts for every man, woman and child. I think if you went out into my electorate—into Dunlop, Macgregor, Spence, Melba—and you said “You’ve got $1,250 to invest in the future of your family and our city,” and you asked them, “What do you want to spend that on,” I wonder where a government office building would rate in their list of priorities. I wonder where it would rate in their list of things that they thought would return a tangible benefit to their quality of life, a tangible benefit for their children or their grandchildren. When it comes down to it, the $432 million the ACT Labor government is proposing to spend on this government office building is not going to deliver a return on investment for the 350,000 people who live in Canberra or the 200,000 or so voters in the territory.

One of the real powers we have in this place and that a government has is vested with taxpayers’ money. It is that ability for the ACT government to actually determine how $4.3 billion of taxpayers’ money is spent in any given year. I wonder how it could be that $432 million—about 10 per cent of our yearly tax revenue—could be spent on something which would not be seen as a priority for the vast majority of Canberrans.


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