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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 6 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

There is no doubt whatsoever that over the years that surplus has been allocated for expenditure on a range of items. One of the expenditures has been on partly offsetting the capital works budget and reducing the amount needed from borrowings, but I say again that the expenditure of that money is a matter for government priorities. Let us look at the priorities of this Government - priorities, incidentally, which have not always been advised to the Assembly or fully addressed at budget time. For instance, we have seen that the Government has decided to expend many millions of dollars to demolish the buildings on Acton Peninsula. In fact, it was a very early Government decision to accede to the land swap in relation to Acton Peninsula. My calculation is that that land swap has actually cost the Territory about $30m. That was a Government decision, that was a priority of this Government, that they wanted to proceed with that land swap.

We also have another Government priority to give massive tax breaks to the business community in the ACT. In the last budget that was presented, those tax breaks amounted to about $10m - again, a priority of the Government. As I say, the Government has a right to set its priorities, but to pretend that that is not what it is doing is very dishonest. That was another priority of this Government. We have also seen the Government, by way of another priority, give about $1.5m in a deal with AOFR to get them to establish here. As I say, the Government has a right to establish those priorities, but to pretend that you do not do that, to pretend that you are balancing the priorities between the business community and the work force, I think, is most misleading. On the calculations that we have done so far on the limited information provided by the Government, this Government has spent somewhere between $6m and $7m on consultancies in the current year. That is a massive amount of money which I do not recall us debating at budget time. I do not recall the Assembly agreeing to that in specific terms, but it is another expression of the priorities of this Government.

We have seen the Government, again in an expression of its priorities, agree to accept a mere $210,000 for the sale of Jindalee Nursing Home. In my view, that is a disastrous deal for the people of the ACT, which leaves them some $1m short. It is a fact that the Government has decided that that is the way it wishes to handle the future of Jindalee Nursing Home; that is the priority that they have attributed to it. I will leave aside for the moment the fact that the Government had promised to the people of Canberra that they would construct two new nursing homes from the proceeds of the sale of Jindalee. I cannot imagine how you could possibly get two nursing homes for $210,000.

The Government has broken that promise, but the decision on the financing of this matter was a matter for the Government. They took that decision and they cannot pretend that that was somehow an immutable fact which they were presented with. They made the decision. They allocated the priority on that issue, just as they did on all of the others that I have enumerated.

Mrs Carnell: And this Assembly passed the budget. The Assembly did pass the budget.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Proceed, Ms Follett.

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