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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 2 Hansard (1 March) . . Page.. 479 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

He has also used the projected figures included in the budget paper, rather than going to the actual expenditure as included in departmental annual reports. We can show you the reports if you have not seen them Mr Quinlan. They are the reports that are tabled in this place for all to see and peruse at their leisure.

But, apparently for Mr Quinlan, a road does not exist just because the earth movers have cleared the area and laid the pavement materials, because they have put down the markings, because they have put up signs and installed guttering and drainage systems. No, according to Mr Quinlan, roads only seem to exist if their funding appears in a particular line in a particular budget paper.

So, Mr Speaker, in 1998-99, of the $4.6 million that we spent on actually laying paving materials and putting down markers over which cars now drive, Mr Quinlan could only find $600,000 worth of road funding in the budget papers. What are we to assume of the remaining $4 million of the roads funding? That the roads were not actually built at all? That they are simply air and Mr Quinlan gets to come to work in some sort of hovercraft, this imaginary technology that the Labor Party seem to have in their minds? One cannot imagine how Mr Quinlan gets to work at all.

Now similarly, according to Mr Quinlan, $6.8 million of the roads constructed in 1999-2000 do not exist either. One would assume that all the road construction going on at that time must have just been a hoax, because Mr Quinlan cannot find it in the budget papers. Is Mr Quinlan suggesting that those jobs that were created, and all those road builders, are just sitting by the roadside having tea, if they exist at all? Perhaps they were talking about sailing and gardening. It appears that it is Mr Quinlan who should get off the grass.

Mr Speaker, it is interesting to note that Mr Quinlan does not have urban services as part of his shadow ministerial responsibilities. That does not appear to matter. As shadow Treasurer, he obviously cannot see the figures in our annual reports and, if he was the shadow Minister for Urban Services, he obviously would not be able to see the roads either.

Mr Quinlan should stick to that which he knows best which, he is rapidly revealing, is very little.

MR SPEAKER: Mrs Burke, supplementary?

MRS BURKE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have a supplementary question in relation to road safety. Is the minister aware of comments made recently about the location of speed cameras in the ACT? Do these comments make sense?

Mr Berry: That is not a supplementary.

MR SPEAKER: No, that is not a supplementary. I am afraid it relates to a separate item.

Commercial agreement-harvesting cork plantations

MR CORBELL: My question is to the Minister for Urban Services. In response to a question on notice, No 319, that I asked the minister earlier this year, the minister confirmed that no commercial agreement had been reached between ACT Forests and

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