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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1427 ..

Mr Moore: Mr Quinlan has already spoken on that.

MR BERRY: Mr Quinlan did say that he did not think that there was anything wrong with reminding you quite often about Bruce Stadium. I think that he is right and I think that it will echo right through until October.

Mr Hargreaves: You didn't do that on Impulse, did you?

MR BERRY: That is right; it was an impulsive move. The debt incurred as part of the stadium redevelopment and subsequent operational costs has been wiped, $5.4 million. The debt of the Kingston Foreshore Development Authority also has been wiped. Gee, that was another good deal!. Mr Humphries will say in his response, if I can guess correctly, that the building of the National Museum on the Acton site created lots of jobs and all that sort of stuff and resulted in massive inputs to the ACT economy. It would not have mattered where the National Museum was constructed, whether it was on the Acton site or anywhere else, as it still would have created lots of jobs and there would have been lots of inputs to the ACT economy. I merely draw attention to the fact that the land swap was a crook deal and the territory did badly out of it.

Not only did we do badly out of the land swap in terms of the costs that we had to bear to clear the Acton site, but also we have now been subjected to the incompetence of this government because of the implosion and the ongoing legal costs, the total for which I do not think anybody would be game to guess. Nobody has any idea where they are headed. That is another one of the vortexes that we are in and cannot get out of. The legal costs are continually climbing. We now have the problem of the insurer against those legal costs challenging its obligation to pay. Who knows what the legal costs will be to test that or whether HIH Insurance will be there to pay anyway?

Each time one turns a page of this document one is reminded of the incompetence of this government. Each time we receive an additional appropriation bill we get a certificate of incompetence. Mr Speaker, this document is no different. Labor will be supporting this bill ever so reluctantly because this year the final test will come for this government and this document will serve as a reminder to the rest of the community why it is necessary to turf out this lot.

MR HARGREAVES (12.13): In my comments on Appropriation Bill (No 2), I will address the Urban Services issues initially, but I will not take very long, Mr Speaker. We are seeing $3.7 million being put into activities which could have waited until the budget was delivered in the Appropriation Bill which will be before us later. For the life of me, I cannot work out how these items, $3.7 million worth, can be approved by this Assembly in May and contracted out and paid for by 30 June. I do not think that we have anybody in our public service who can do that, particularly when this government says at page 66 of the document that $1 million will be specifically allocated to addressing streetlight upgrading issues along major roads and establishing, in consultation with the ACT region of the Australian Federal Police and the local community, Neighbourhood Watch groups. We will have six weeks to get the work done and paid for. That is going to be a great consultation process, is it not? It is a hallmark of the consultation process. That is rather pathetic.

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