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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3457 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

The minister says in his statements that he will be out there consulting with the committee. There has been no consultation on design or programs, and yet they have gone ahead and selected the prison site. As to being more open and consultative, we have finally found out that the Chief Minister will deign to go down to talk to the people of the Tuggeranong Community Council in February next year. He will go down to Tuggeranong, 15 months later, for his first meeting with the people of the Tuggeranong Valley through their elected organisation, the Tuggeranong Community Council. If that is his idea of openness and being more consultative, then he needs to get out there and actually talk to the people.

We have seen the disappearance of the meet the minister program. You can now only meet a minister in his or her electorate. The fact that there are no "her"ministers is perhaps another problem.

Mr Speaker, let me get back to corrections. Mr Quinlan said there would be a protocol which would ensure that low-risk prisoners go to the temporary remand facility at Symonston. However, at the estimates hearing, there was an admission that high-risk prisoners may end up there as well. So it goes on.

Turning to business: the government promised to be a low-taxing government. They made the statement at the Press Club that they would be a low-taxing government. However, at the first opportunity, they stopped reducing the taxes on business-keeping us competitive. Instead of having the payroll tax threshold go up, in fact it stayed the same. We have been promised a white paper, which is due soon, but we were told in estimates that they were not sure whether it would achieve much.

As to tourism: I see nothing from this government.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming and Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Corrections) (4.32): Mr Speaker, the government is lazy; the government is "do-nothing". That is generally the first weapon of choice of an opposition bereft of ideas and, more importantly, bereft of a criticism of substance. You will see this occurring in the Victorian election campaign in the next couple of weeks. You will have the opposition saying the government is a do-nothing government. It is the soft option-it is the easy criticism.

People will say, "Yes. We do not like governments anyway. I do not read the paper and I have not seen all the things they have done."It is something that will resonate. If you cannot score a clean punch at all, what do you do? You take the time-honoured, shop-worn, soft option-the government is lazy-a do-nothing. That is about as good as the argument gets.

I am interested, though. It has been educational to be here to hear the opposition say that the concept of thinking is anathema. We had, of course, concluded that. We have seen this opposition in action. No, they did not think. Bruce Stadium would be a good example. "We did not think about it."Fair enough? "We got on with the job."CanDeliver is another one. What did that cost us? "We got on with the job-we did it!"Impulse Airlines: "We got on with the job-we did it!"

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