Page 4348 - Week 13 - Thursday, 11 December 2014
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MR COE (Ginninderra) (11.03): It is an honour to propose Jeremy Hanson, and I therefore move:
That Mr Hanson be elected Chief Minister for the Territory.
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, is the nomination accepted?
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.04): It is, Madam Speaker.
MADAM SPEAKER: Are there any other proposals? There being no further proposal, I declare that we have to proceed to an election, there being more than one candidate. The election of Chief Minister will proceed by ballot. Before proceeding to the ballot, it is open to members to make statements that are relevant to the election; that is, any member. The time limit per speaker is five minutes.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.04): Today’s vote is not just a vote about the next two years. It is a vote about the direction of this territory and this city. Mr Barr claims that he has a mandate and that he deserves support. But I want to clearly and firmly state in this place that he has no such mandate and he deserves no such support.
This was a factional deal done for the party and not for the people of Canberra. He has no mandate to shackle this territory with light rail. According to the Treasury-costed policy submitted before the last election, the ACT Labor Party promise was for $30 million. He will now force through a project with a cost at least 20 times that large. He will spend three times that amount of money every single year for at least 20 years. If this had been known before the last election, the result would have been different.
Madam Speaker, he has no mandate for his rates regime. Mr Barr was hiding the truth about the extent of the rates hike at the last election, and we now know that they are tripling, because it is in the budget and it is in everybody’s rates notice. If this had been known before the last election, the result would have been different.
Madam Speaker, if it had been known that Andrew Barr and Simon Corbell would be the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister, the result would have been different. And let me prove it. Mr Barr gained just 4.2 per cent of the vote. For the record, every single MLA in the Liberal Party in his electorate got a higher vote. I, Mrs Jones, Mr Doszpot and even Elizabeth Lee, a candidate for the Liberal Party who did not get elected, got a higher personal vote than this man, Andrew Barr. As an aside, for Mr Rattenbury’s edification, so did Caroline Le Couteur.
Then, Madam Speaker, there is his record. His first act on his first day as a minister was to start closing 23 schools. This was not a closure program that was taken to the ACT electorate. It was hidden. And he has presided over an explosion of debt and deficit. Most of all, his real vision is to tax the family home. Let me quote from Mr Barr’s maiden speech:
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