Page 1424 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 3 May 2016
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In terms of light rail, it is fundamentally clear that this is not a project that stacks up in any sense—not as a transport project, not economically, and not in terms of providing benefit for our city in terms of the shape of our town centres. It is an unholy deal to try to keep the Greens in the tent. This is part of the stitch-up. Because this government was prepared to sign away hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, we now have a situation where the Greens minister is entirely complicit when it comes to matters such as the leaking of information to the CFMEU bearing all the details that should be provided to the community.
I know that Mr Wall has spoken at some length on this, but the MOU is not the end of our litigation of this issue. But what an extraordinary situation: people wanting to do business in this town have to deal with the unions and their demands if they want to do business. This has been well litigated, and it is an absolute outrage. Those opposite maybe cannot see it; maybe they just cannot see it. Maybe, after 15 years, they have been in government too long. Maybe they are too infected by the unions, as Jon Stanhope asserts. Or maybe they are just willing to go along with it because they know that is where they get their power and their money from—funded to them by the CFMEU.
When it comes to lobbying, again we have a situation where, through people in the Labor right faction, through various land deals in this town, or through people in the left faction, through the CFMEU, it increasingly seems as though, if you want to do business in this town, if you want to do business with the government, it is best to have some Labor mates in tow. You either call on the mates from the union or you call on the mates who are lobbyists. Mr Barr was talking about the white shoe brigade. The people he should look more closely at are the people that he associates with and who members of his cabinet associate with who are in the middle of many of the land deals in this town that have got this community outraged.
If we look at some of the deals that are being currently investigated, that are being looked at very closely by the community—if you look at the heart of a lot of these deals, look at who is getting the money, look at who is the beneficiary of a lot of government decisions—we know who we will find in the middle of them. We will find your Labor right faction mates or your CFMEU left faction mates. That is the way that this government is operating.
When it comes to ethical government, when it comes to the ministerial code of conduct, what I say is this—and it is not just me; let me tell you that it is not just the Liberals; read the comments in the paper; read the letters; talk to people in the community; it is not just the Canberra Liberals saying this—what people in this town see is a government that has been around too long, a government that is too complicit with its mates, a government that is starting to smell.
If you think that New South Wales Labor 2011 was bad, I would say: start to look at ACT Labor circa 2016; you see the same rot.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo—Minister for Corrections, Minister for Education, Minister for Justice and Consumer Affairs and Minister for Road Safety) (3.42): I am
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