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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2802 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

They were to be at Charnwood also. They were to be open to the public free. That changed to a dollar-for-dollar arrangement under the new policy of the current sports minister.

Mr Corbell: Where was that in the last budget?

MR STEFANIAK: One of them was in the budget. That was the skateboard park, which would have benefited up to 6,000 young people. This government made a lot about extra facilities throughout Canberra and a lot about extra facilities in Belconnen. Yet when they get their hands on the purse strings they do not deliver. That is shameful. It is hypocritical.

Mr Corbell: Where was your tennis court money?

MR STEFANIAK: It is all very well for those opposite to try to interject or try to talk me down. One member trying to talk me down was very keen to see a dragway built. He was going to do that. There is no money for that. Has he really annoyed a lot of people about that. In opposition, Mr Corbell was one of the great proponents of a dragway. What did he do in cabinet? He said, "There is not enough money to go around." Promises were made. I have highlighted a few: one, a skateboard park; two, education; three, a dragway. A lot of people who had a lot of expectations from this government have been very disappointed. It is very much a budget that has failed to deliver and has failed to live up to the hopes a lot of people had for the government. That is a real worry.

I am not going to deal with some of the other issues. They can be done in the detail stage. The budget has holes in it. It is a lazy budget. There is not very much vision in this budget. There are some worrying signs in some of the directions it takes. There are some equally and possibly more worrying signs about the contempt in which the government has held certain sections of the community it promised to help but has not delivered for in this budget. People are going to be watching very carefully what this government does next time, because quite a few people are disappointed as a result of this budget.

MRS DUNNE (11.18): Mr Speaker, I will range over the whole of the budget in making some comments, especially in relation to the minister's response to the Select Committee on Estimates. My colleague the Deputy Leader of the Opposition talked about direction and purpose, vision and commitment and how they are lacking in this government.

And I would add to that "openness". We heard a lot-almost a mantra, almost a chanting-all through the pre-election period: "We will be open, honest, accountable, measured"-all of these words. But, when it comes to facts, this is a government that knows nothing about being open and honest with its electors. This is a government that knows a great deal about how to hedge its bets and qualify what it has to say. So it is true in many ways that, when you think that Mr Corbell for instance has said something emphatic, when you go back and actually read his words, they are full of weasel words, prevarication and qualification. So in fact he says nothing. This is a government that is incapable of being open.

I would just like to touch on some of the issues. Some have been touched on by Mr Smyth, but I would like to emphasise it. The committee system in this place is one of the most important aspects of what we do here, because it is in the committee system that

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