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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1462 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

it this government that considered that the fundamentals were right enough to spend money on a futsal slab? Wasn't it this government that felt the fundamentals were sufficiently in place to blow a heap of cash on a Feel the Power campaign? Wasn't it this government that thought the fundamentals were so right that we could spend $82 million, and still counting, on Bruce Stadium and Olympic Soccer? You cannot come to this place in an election year and claim that you could not do anything about the social ills of this town because the fundamentals were not there when you have in your wake such a litany of obvious waste. This government did not focus on the pressing social-

Mr Moore: You always mix capital and recurrent, don't you? You deliberately mix it.

MR QUINLAN: How much capital value is left at Bruce, Mr Moore? Read the balance sheet. Zip. This government did not focus on pressing social need in this community because they didn't particularly care.

I rather suspect that one of the driving forces behind the change in attitude and the attempt to paper over so many holes with dollar bills, one of the ingredients for that change, is some recent polling. There are a lot of similarities between the way this government behaves and the way their federal counterparts behave, and they are largely poll-driven. It is not about serving the community; it is just about staying in government. As a result of that we see this scattergun approach of this whole plethora of programs that will imply an impossible management load.

Whether these programs are delivered by government agencies or whether they are delivered by NGOs, there is going to have to be individual accounting for every one of them. There is going to have to be accounting in the NGOs for the ones that they deliver, and then they are going to have to put the reports in to government and the government is going to have to check them. There are all these small programs.

So what does this disjointed process have to offer? It has to offer a list of 55 pages worth of photo opportunities. This is the photo opportunity program launch government. The photo opportunity is the bottom line. You would say, "Well, okay, some of these programs go for several years, so maybe the money might really go to the sharp end of the problem in the second year." But that is generally not the case because we launch them again.

Last year I went over the road here to the gallery. There was a launch attended by what we would call the cheer squad, the glee club. They were all called in to assist the government-things were not going well at the time-for the launch of the second edition of a three-fold brochure on Canberra. I think, from those that I have attended, that that had to take the cake as being the most Pythonesque in its nature.

The line, "Oh, we had to get the fundamentals right, and now we can become a socially aware government", is just not believable. This budget of this government is about getting re-elected. It's about: "Whoops! We have seen the polls. We are way behind on social issues. Our values are not the values of the people of the ACT. Therefore, we had better make the move. As quickly as we can, with all the spin that we can muster, we had better put together as many programs as we can and appear to be doing as much as we can. All you ministers fill up your diaries, start getting out the tea and bikkies and putting

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