Page 2846 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 2013
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is a must-have; trust us. We are not going to show you all the detail.” When they did, it all fell over. So this mob have learned from that. What they have learned is, “What we will do is come up with these schemes, but rather than show the opposition the detail so that our house of cards will collapse, we will just hide the detail from them. Then they cannot pull it down. The community cannot see how we are wasting millions of dollars of their money, potentially, or how we are doing a tax reform that is disingenuous.”
They have changed their approach. Their approach is, “We simply will not show you the detail.” That is what we are saying today: let us have the debate with the evidence. Let us have the debate with the detail. What the government is asking us to do is to sign off on a budget, vote on a budget, debate a budget, that is deceptive, that is inadequate, that simply does not have the detail. That is not by accident. That is because this mob do not want it in there because they know that if it is in there, we will show the community—be it with ACTEW, be it with light rail or be it, most particularly, with the tax reform—that it does not stack up, that it is not good value for them. That is what we are about here today.
I commend Mr Smyth’s motion. We do not have confidence in this Treasurer because he is deceiving the community. It is quite clear that that is the strategy of this government: withhold information, hide the facts, do not present the modelling, sign off on things for political expediency regardless of the cost to the community. As a result, we have no confidence in the Treasurer. I commend Mr Smyth’s motion to the Assembly.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (11.59), in reply: What an interesting defence we have had from those opposite. Ms Gallagher thinks that because she is on that side of the chamber everything is okay; she won; therefore she can do what she wants. No, that is not so. Yes, you are on the government benches; yes, this is your budget; and yes, we will hold you to account.
The speeches from the government all start with the personal slur and the personal attack. You know Mr Barr is in trouble when he goes straight to the slur and stares steely eyed at the person sitting in the chair, because he knows that what he is saying is not relevant to the debate.
We had an expose on the budget. Good luck to you. We had an expose on what other states and territories have done in their budgets. Good luck with that. None of it was relevant and none of it went to the case. I will make it clear again: we are not saying, “Do not pass the budget.” We are not saying that we want to block supply. We are just saying, “Give us the details, as you are obliged to do under the act.”
Ms Gallagher made an interesting point. She said, “Yes, but if we delay it then of course the new initiatives cannot go ahead.” So based on that, if Ms Gallagher wants, she can have leave to stand up and say that not a single cent has been spent from 1 July until today on any of her new initiatives or projects because obviously they have not had the money appropriated for it. And that, I suspect, is patently untrue. I am sure people are working to implement the government’s agenda, as public servants should.
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