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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1469 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

neither can the government's appalling industrial relations record. I need only refer to the "departure lounge" to emphasise the appalling attitude this government has had to its workers.

Let us not forget the government's attitude to the forestry workers who have been ditched or to the Totalcare workers who will lose their jobs as a result of the government's failure to come to a reasonable arrangement with Totalcare over the contract with Housing. We saw all the claims by the government about Housing and Totalcare. It was interesting that Totalcare was not aware of any complaints about the service it was providing or of the costs, but the knife was drawn behind its back. Those workers at Totalcare were stabbed in the back by the Liberals but would not have been surprised at that. They know the way conservatives treat workers; there is a long history of it in this country. What this government did will not be forgotten.

Let us look at some other aspects of the government's performance. Bruce Stadium has been mentioned ad nauseam and will continue to be at the forefront of the community's memory of this government's appalling performance in financial management: unlawful expenditure leading to massive blowouts that future generations will have to pay for one way or another.

There was the CanDeliver debacle; the attempt to sell Actew after the government, lying to the community, said it was not on their agenda; the ridiculous Feel the Power campaign-which, incidentally, was used at the Liberals' last election campaign launch-and the silly aeroplane debacle. Money was paid to paint "Feel the Power" on the side of an aeroplane that travelled a couple of thousand metres at 500 or 600 kilometres an hour. One might wonder how anybody could ever see the thing. But it flew within the terms of the contract, and the money was never recovered. This government has a bad record on contracts, and that is one of them. Any time they go near aircraft we seem to get into trouble-now we have some problems with the Impulse deal as well.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, you will remember the Woodies tennis game, which was so appropriately funded out of forestry. The rights to have the game in Canberra were won over a couple of glasses of red in Sydney-at significant expense to the territory. The ACT embassy in Sydney is another curious matter that this government was associated with. Cutting the School of Music funding was another thing. The futsal slab will never leave our memory, nor will the Floriade fee and that silly black fence.

Of course, the fence was there to stop people getting in for nothing. That is what it was put there for: to make sure they could only get in through the gate so they would have to pay. My bet is that the contract to put the fence up had been let well before the government made the decision to ditch the Floriade fee, so I rather suspect that the government was in a big hurry to ditch the Floriade fee little while ago. It was interesting that, when I called for the ditching of the Floriade fee at about 9.30 in the morning and set up a press conference, shortly after 10.30 the government was able to announce that it had been ditched. I would say that was an extraordinary coincidence.

People have had to suffer the insurance levy and the emergency services levy-so much for the emphasis on fighting poverty in the ACT. There are still a lot of people who remember the wriggly lines on the roads-the squiggles. And, of course, we remain in

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