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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2206 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

the public, but the reality is that the Chief Minister's office is responsible for some of the most important parts of our budget and some of the most important parts of managing the ACT and, as such, the budget that she has got is entirely appropriate.

Going on to the guts of Mr Hargreaves' attack on the budget - rubbish bins - again, like so much of this week, Mr Hargreaves misrepresents, as he has done since the issue of rubbish bins was first raised. In developing a strategy to manage waste properly for the ACT, we consulted far and wide and looked at what was going on, not just round Australia but round the world, to make sure that what we were doing was appropriate. It is quite clear that, in some instances, the provision of open-top rubbish bins is no longer suitable. But where they are needed and appropriate, they have been replaced with larger bins. It is something that Mr Hargreaves seems to have trouble coming to grips with and it is something that he fails to understand or chooses not to understand. When I look round Australia and see councils such as the North Sydney and Manly councils doing exactly the same thing and when I have somebody like Ian Kiernan telling me that it is most appropriate and he is approving of it, I have to ask myself whether I should take Mr Hargreaves' advice or whether I should take Mr Kiernan's advice, and in this case I think I will stick with Mr Kiernan.

Then we had the complaint about playgrounds. Mr Hargreaves said that Mr Corbell's son will have difficulty by the time he is 12 years old because the playgrounds will be substandard or something else. The curious thing is that Mr Corbell, I believe, lives in Gungahlin and all the playgrounds out there were built only recently and all would have been built to Australian standards. We do have playgrounds in the ACT that are somewhat aged, but they are safe. Any unsafe playground equipment has been removed. Mr Hargreaves in his attack says that the Government will use a specific defence, and he is quite right. Things that were built at a certain time in compliance with the standard of the day and are safe are still acceptable today. The classic case is the automobile. Many cars these days would have to be considered unsafe against modern standards, but they were built to the standard of the day and, if they are maintained properly, are still appropriate for use on our roads.

That gets me to roads. Mr Hargreaves claims that he asked during the estimates about the condition of our roads and whether they had they been built to a certain standard. One question he asked was: "Which arterial roads were at their design life of 20 years at self-government and how many have been upgraded since?". In raising this point, Mr Hargreaves says that we have roads that are old and nothing is happening to them. If Mr Hargreaves had managed to consult the answer that he was provided with he would have found, just quickly looking at it, that, apart from the national roads for which I cannot answer, they have all been resealed, had an asphalt overlay or been rebuilt since self-government.

It is quite interesting that all of these roads have been adequately dealt with, but we do not get that sort of acknowledgment from Mr Hargreaves. He tells half the story and then he walks away and forgets to tell or acknowledge the rest of the story. Clearly, some of those would have been repaired or looked at in Labor days, some would have been done in the time of Mr Kaine as the Alliance Chief Minister, and some would have been done under the Carnell Liberal Government. It is interesting, Mr Speaker, that he makes statements that he refuses to back up, ignores the answers given and simply waltzes away from the scene of the crime.

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