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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (21 May) . . Page.. 1551 ..

MR BERRY: An open and honest process where the rules - - -

Mr De Domenico: Your nose is getting longer, Wayne.

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, try the volume again.

MR SPEAKER: Yes. Continue, Mr Berry.

MR BERRY: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It was an honest and open process, and Mrs Carnell was so smart alec about it. She was going to build all of these factors into this budget and nothing would escape her notice. She was going to anticipate everything that could go wrong. There was no need for business rules. Nothing was going to be unexpected. We were going to make all these savings from the VMOs. They were going to be so generous as to say, "Look, we will give you some money back. We will give a little bit back, Mrs Carnell, to help you along". Of course, it did not happen, so part of the $14.2m was from this wild expectation.

This has been a situation where the Chief Minister has created a problem for herself which could have been dealt with in the normal way. There is no need to go down this path, there is no need for an extra appropriation, and who trusts her with the $14.2m, after what she has done thus far? There is no genuine need for the money, because the money is already there. You are not going to fool anybody. It is already socked away; you have it in the bank.

Mr De Domenico: You vote against the Bill.

MR BERRY: You just watch. Mr Speaker, this is one of the most phoney attempts the community will ever see from this Government. "I have the $14.2m", Mrs Carnell says, "I have it stored away".

Mrs Carnell: In capital, not in recurrent.

MR BERRY: No, you do not have it in capital; you have it stored away. Mrs Carnell has the money stored away, and now she is going to press this phoney appropriation process to try to demonstrate that she is doing something differently. That was basically the reason - "They did it one way and therefore I have to do it in a different way, otherwise that which I criticised in the past might show me now as being a hypocrite". You have to have better reasons than that. If you made a mistake in the past, that is just too bad; you have to live with that sometimes. But this does not get you off the hook.

Mr Whitecross: You would have to say that you were wrong then, and Mrs Carnell cannot say that.

MR BERRY: That is right; it is not in her vocabulary. Mr Speaker, for our part, this is a totally unnecessary process. We will not be party to these sorts of charades. They are not sensible. They do not lead this Assembly any place. It is a pretence to say that they need the extra money. They do not need the extra money; they already have it.

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