Page 3275 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 21 August 2018
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these values. In just 12 months costs for ACT corrections are expected to increase by $8 million or 10 per cent. Hopefully that will lead to better results. The question has got to be not just are we measuring things on inputs but also are we measuring them on outputs? What are we actually going to get for this additional $8 million? I hope the minister will be able to shed more light, in addition to what is in the budget.
Ratepayers continue to pay the price for this government’s inability to maintain costs, stick to budgets and actually prioritise what the front line is advising them. This budget is not a good budget for emergency services in Canberra. The Canberra Liberals will continue to do all we can to advocate for better budget solutions, better results and more effective and efficient government, especially for the front line of our emergency services.
MR PARTON (Brindabella) (11.26): I rise to respond to the appropriation bill in relation to the Justice and Community Safety Directorate and to focus on some of the gaming and racing space. I note that the minister when he spoke to this line did not actually make any mention of gaming and racing—and I understand that the Gambling and Racing Commission is still to come—but as the policy comes from this space I want to address it here.
Time and again we see that this government has absolutely no comprehension of the gaming and racing space. There is no minister for gaming and racing, and those who are connected to either industry scratch their heads and wonder if this minister should be given the title of “minister against all gaming and racing”—a minister who would like to stop all gaming and racing because it is just not nice, because it is not something that he would ever do and so why would anyone else want to do it, and because it seems that he believes that if there is any possibility of harm then you should not ever consider undertaking that behaviour and, indeed, you should forcibly stop every other community member participating as well.
We can all hope that the ministerial reshuffle will move Mr Ramsay as far away from gaming and racing as is humanly possible because it is not a portfolio that Mr Ramsay should have anything to do with. It just is not. The only thing that he sees connected to gambling is harm. That is it. He does not see anything else.
I note that the minister chooses to dismiss everything I say in this space as the ravings of a shock jock. And I guess my question to the minister would be: if I were such a shock jock why did he choose to keep on being a guest on my program every week, if you do not mind, every single week? Week after week, year after year every Monday at 6.50 am: “Gordon Ramsay joins me from UnitingCare at Kippax.”
When we consider the wafer-thin margin by which Mr Ramsay was elected to this place it would be very easy to arrive at a conclusion that, had Mr Ramsay not associated with such an evil, conservative shock jock, had he not appeared on my program every week, he would not be in this place. Is it not also ironic that, without the money that flows to Labor coffers from poker machines, I dare say Mr Ramsay would not have made it over the line either? How ironic, the two things that Mr Ramsay seems to hate the most—poker machines and evil, conservative shock jocks—ultimately have delivered him to the Assembly!
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