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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2315 ..

We have the implosion. The implosion itself was the result, in my view and in the view of many others, of a meddlesome government.

We had the Hall/Kinlyside affair, where we saw mates' deals and the difference between blocks and leases. Who can forget Hall/Kinlyside? They can forget Hall/Kinlyside, and they will as quickly as they can.

We have the continuing saga of the prison, because the minister over here cannot find enough information to do a simple cost-benefit analysis, and justify his own ideology by saying that it has to be privately run. He cannot do it. He doesn't have the information and just plain can't do it, so he comes up with a half-baked, eight-page piece of rubbish.

We have the old zone system in the ACTION bus network. That went down like a beauty. Everybody was really thrilled to see that. Weren't they lining up at the bus stops, trying to get on and pay all that extra money?

Then we have the crowning glory: "Can'tDeliver". I beg your pardon, CanDeliver, but now "Can'tDeliver". What did they do? They killed it. Why did they kill it? Because it was an embarrassment to them. These are not what I would say are the hallmarks of a successful government.

When we were talking about general maintenance-about roads and things like that-what we were actually talking about was that there was not a lot of that in the draft budget, in January. All of a sudden, though, the Treasurer has had this massive win on the poker machines-the Grants Commission poker machine-and dragged in all this dough. So, next thing you know, out roll barrels full of pork.

I will leave my comments on policing to another time. Again, we have the same sort of story. The only reason we can get the extra 50 police is because you had that big win on the pokies.

This government has been stumbling from one crisis to another and doesn't deserve to continue. We can go on and be supercritical of this particular budget. This particular part of the budget, if my reading isn't far wrong, is $80 million less than the department of health's allocation. It is the second biggest budget we are dealing with. We could be here for a cubic fortnight working out exactly what is wrong with it.

I have to say there are a few things I quite like about it, but I can't be bothered going into those at the moment. However, the second part of the issue is the most significant. This budget is an expression of confidence and it is an expression of confidence in the whole government and I urge you to reject it.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your time has expired, Mr Hargreaves.

MR CORBELL (8.52): The Department of Urban Services is the key agency for the delivery of municipal planning and other services to Canberrans. It is a department on which I shadowed the minister in relation to a couple of important areas, planning and the environment. My comments tonight will be confined to those areas.

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