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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4156 ..

the report. I didn’t know. How can I comment on this?”—whether they be annual reports, committee reports or what. There is the forgetfulness—$13 million at least that they will not tell us about on consultancies.

MR SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism and Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming) (3.42): I agree with a little snide remark Mrs Dunne made earlier on the first motion for the day. Yes, we are heading towards the end of the election cycle. We have got to put on the show, I guess; so let’s join in the game. I would like to talk about the context in which this government came into power, what we faced and what we fixed in terms of achievement. I will list a few of the great achievements of the previous government and I will go back as far as the first thing I had to fix, which was CanDeliver. This was going to sort out and help local business. That cost us millions. That was just millions gone.

There was talk of a prison. Was there any funding? No. I was corrections minister for a while. We had a remand centre that was overcrowded. Was there any funding for that? No. There was talk of a medical school. Was there any funding for that? No. We had on our hands a nurses dispute. Unresolved. Any funding for that? No. The budget they had put together for the last year was a fraud. We had the Gallop report on our hands to show how well they could take care of disability services. We had this issue of child protection about which they knew absolutely nothing. It is now being fixed by this government.

Tourism spent all its money on a single event about which Mr Smyth has from time to time said, “Oh, we had to let it go because you don’t make money in the first year.” It was making less and less money over its life, Mr Smyth; it was going down the gurgler. The novelty value had worn off and it was not working. We spent a lot of money; we virtually spent the whole tourism budget on it. I do not know how much else was spent in kind by various other agencies to prop the thing up. But it was hopeless. We had the Totalcare quarry, Mr Speaker, about which you know something. That was another fiasco.

There may be one project I can think of, and that is a few million dollars spent at Manuka oval, which was the afterthought, because Bruce Stadium had been alienated for a code of football. I have a conspiracy theory about that, but I have not got time for it today. The now Canberra Stadium was redeveloped so that it was virtually a pitch and not an oval anymore. I think that Manuka money might not have been a stuff-up.

I cannot think of anything else, in at least the 3½ years that I was here watching it from that side, that did not go bloody south. There were the deals that they did—the Fujitsu deal, the FAI deal, the Impulse deal. Mr Speaker, they were hopeless. They had a bit of flash at the top. They lost that. They had a pretty articulate advocate in Gary Humphries, and he has moved on. But that was it. They had a bit of flash in Chief Minister Carnell, and they had a very good rationaliser and a guy that could actually—what would you say?—misinform with style. But that was it. They were hopeless.

I am not a great fan of Crispin Hull, let me say. But let me quote from Saturday, 6 December 2003, eight months ago—two years in opposition:

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