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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2606 ..

I’d also like to advise the Assembly that in a debate in the Assembly on 11 March I brought to the attention of the Assembly that per capita expenditure on mental health in the ACT had increased to $117 per head.

So this is his first claim: “Under this government, it increased to $117.” This is correct:

However, I am advised by my department that the level of expenditure at the time of the change of government was $82.50 per capita, not $67 per capita. This error was included in a speech prepared for me by ACT Health, and I wish to correct the record so there is no misunderstanding.

This beggars belief. If Mr Corbell had used the figure once, maybe even twice, this explanation would stack up. But the explanation does not stack up because I have evidence that shows that Mr Corbell was informed of the correct figure, in writing, in February 2004, the month before he started using the erroneous figure.

Mr Corbell misled the Assembly also in his correction. Mr Speaker, at a question time brief given in February 2004, the minister was informed by his department that the figure for 2001-02 was in fact $83.70. It’s in his question time brief, the brief that he brings to the Assembly. Mr Corbell was advised in February 2004 that the figure was $83.70. He knowingly used the incorrect figure in each of the references in the March sitting.

Mr Speaker, I seek leave to table the document “Question brief 2004 Report on Government Services”.

Leave granted.

MR SMYTH: I present the following paper:

2004 Report on Government Services—quality and efficiency of health services in the ACT—Question brief, 10 February 2004.

These examples demonstrate an attitude from the minister that he is happy to mislead the Assembly and is happy to mislead the Assembly even when he’s correcting the record. This is a minister who is prepared to mislead the Assembly quite without remorse; he is not fit to hold office. (Extension of time granted.)

The final part of the mental health saga is the claim that “we’ve doubled the money”. The brief that Mr Corbell has for question time actually says that the funding under this government went up by $2.72 million. In this place and in press releases, Mr Corbell claimed that the government has increased mental health funding by $3.4 million in the last two budgets. So the other sad and sorry part of this saga is Mr Corbell’s insistence that they have doubled mental health funding. They have not. What they have done is the tricky sleight of hand of adjusting money.

When he came to office it was $83. They’re putting in $3.4 million, by his own claim—and I think he needs to justify it because, according to the question time brief, their two budgets only bring in $2.72 million. If you take his $3.4 million—let’s give him his $3.4 million—that equates to $10 per head of population of the ACT. So if it’s $83 when we leave office and we add $10, that’s $93 in the two years, the period that he was talking

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