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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1891 ..
MRS DUNNE
(continuing):limits, with some documents last Friday, I still cannot work out what has happened. We seem to know that we did not actually give them any extra blocks of land, that they paid for them, but they paid for them in a way that I do not know that most builders would pay. I do not know many builders who would spend $900,000 out of their own pocket to build roads and parks just out of the goodness of their heart.
Mr Speaker, what has happened at Horse Park raises more questions than it answers. That is why this committee has recommended that the Auditor-General inquire into it. The dissembling of the minister and the officials about this matter has gone on for two years and I cannot get to the bottom of the matter. Members of the committee sitting there listening to the obfuscation that went on about this matter were appalled by it.
If we look around, we will find these things throughout. We still have not had an answer on why we do not have a computer-aided dispatch system at the Emergency Services Bureau. That money was appropriated in 1999, but this year we still do not have a computer-aided dispatch system and I still cannot get a satisfactory answer as to why it has taken so long. That is why we have asked the Auditor-General to inquire into it.
Mr Wood
: You heard the answer. You just don't understand it.MRS DUNNE
: We heard words, Mr Wood, but they did not constitute an answer.Mr Wood
: The first thing I did when I became minister was to get it moving.MR SPEAKER
: Order, Mr Wood! Mrs Dunne has the floor.Mrs Burke
: And the scratchies, Bill.MRS DUNNE
: And then there were the scratchies. That was a good one. In addition to the more glaring examples of arrogance and complete disregard for process, we have, for instance, the complete failure of this government to implement a policy in relation to a hot water system rebate, which is one of the things close to my heart. They have a policy; it just doesn't work. We came into this place in, I think, April of last year and discussed whether this system would work. Mr Wood, as the then Minister for the Environment, said, "This is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This does all sorts of things."The take-up has been so pathetic, so poor, that we have given people more financial inducements to try to get them to take up the money before the end of the financial year.This system has comprehensively failed, but the then Minister for the Environment, who is also the minister for housing, will not do anything, although this place has passed a motion requiring him to do so, to address the need to install solar hot water systems in government houses, because that would be too expensive. We actually have here money directed at the private sector which no-one will take up and the government will not take that money and apply it to government housing, as they were required to do. They will not do so because, "Really, poor people don't need these sorts of facilities. This is middle class welfare, we're the Labor Party, and this is what we're about."
Mr Speaker, this estimates report is a litany of failure. Throughout the budget is a litany of sloppy, back-of-the-envelope calculations. There are items which are described as initiatives but which are not initiatives. It is an outrage, Mr Speaker, that this government
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