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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 1 Hansard (15 February) . . Page.. 231 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

reason the community do not trust them is that they have seen all the off-budget efforts of this government, efforts such as the Hall/Kinlyside debacle. That inspired confidence in the community! What use is a budget consultation process to fix that? None. It does not do a thing to fix the Hall/Kinlysides of the world. The budget consultation process does not fix all the dodgy deals that are done off budget. What about the tragic hospital implosion? Bomber Humphries over there-

MR SPEAKER: Relevance, please, Mr Berry.

MR BERRY: That is an off-budget matter as well. How does the budget consultation process fix that? It does not fix it at all. It does not affect it at all. All of the appalling behaviour and appalling management of this government is not fixed by the consultation process. That is why the community know it is a sham and a political stunt.

We have seen the ups and downs of the Floriade fee off budget. How would a genuine consultation process, as described by the government, change those sorts of disasters? It would have no effect at all. What about Bruce Stadium? No story is complete without some discussion of Bruce Stadium.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Berry, relevance, please. The mantra is becoming a little tedious.

MR BERRY: What sort of budget consultation process would fix that? I know, Mr Speaker, that you are embarrassed about the government's performance on this and you do not want to hear it over and over again.

MR SPEAKER: I am concerned about relevance to the debate.

MR BERRY: We have got until October.

MR SPEAKER: I am worried about that.

MR BERRY: All of this is extremely relevant, because it is all about the radical mistakes that have been made by this government and how they are trying to blur the lines in this Assembly to create the impression that somebody other than them is responsible for what comes out in the budget if it is no good. It boils down to the need to propagandise the electorate and the failure of the government to be able to connect with the community in a reasonable consultation process and feed the result into a budget for subsequent scrutiny in this place.

I have said before that a budget put forward in this place for scrutiny is in effect a draft budget. In effect, we have two draft budgets and a consultation process foist on committees, to the point that committees have never been so bogged down in unproductive work as they are by the antics from the government and the majority in this Assembly.

This is a sham process. There is no doubt about that. It is well understood by the community that this is a sham process. This sham process will distract the community's interest from those issues which will drag this government down. This government is now six years old and tired. The same old faces are attached to the same old decisions, no matter what they try to do.

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