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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4157 ..

The opposition has been spineless, inept, lazy and dumb.

It is just a quote—that was eight months ago: “spineless, inept, lazy and dumb”. How far have they come in eight months? There has been some change, and the change that I observe is that they have developed this great capacity, by virtue of repeating something over and over again, to convince themselves of propositions that have no basis in truth. If you keep saying it often enough you will convince yourself it is true. In some cases—and we have seen it in this place—we have seen some members in total denial of the facts.

I believe that some of the stuff that has been said in this place could only be said by people who are in fact delusional. They claim that the territory is going well because of all the groundwork they did. Just name the groundwork that this mob did. They keep popping up. But the series of fiascos—they were the hallmark; that was your style; that was you—was appalling.

I have been armed with pages and pages of our achievements, business achievements, the things that we have done to promote business. We are reaping the results. We have an economic white paper, and we put our plans for the ACT economy out there for the public. It is so typical of the inept opposition that we have—

Mr Wood: You’re kind to them.

MR QUINLAN: I am not allowed to use the words I am thinking of—that Mr Smyth would stand in this place and say there was an economic white paper that I could not get through cabinet. Untrue. He said that the author of the original draft, by inference in what he said, in high dudgeon up and left and went to Melbourne. Untrue, Mr Smyth. That does not stop you. As I said earlier, you are delusional; you are prepared, by repetition, to convince yourself of material that simply is not true. And 98 per cent of what Mr Smyth stood in this place and said a few minutes ago was of that variety.

I will tell you this much; I will give you a concession. I have said before that I was not very happy for a period of time in terms of lack of progress on a convention centre. Let me say that there were changes within the administration. Again, the comment we had earlier today about the Convention Centre is so typical: “They should be able to fix it; we don’t want to know; don’t tell us the complicated detail of it.” I have explained the complicated detail of it in this place today. Tomorrow, or a day after that, the same simple proposition will be put forward by Mr Smyth. “You can fix it; you’ve taken too long; it’s easy; I’d fix it tomorrow.” We know what your record is. As I said, what little you had up front in government has gone.

Mr Smyth occasionally uses the phrase “a Smyth Liberal government”. It does not work for me, Brendan. I said it does not work; it just dot, dot, dot does not work, I have got to say. I could in fact list a whole raft of achievements in business, but no.

Mr Pratt: But you can’t remember?

MR QUINLAN: No, I have got them all here, mate. I do not have time to list them all. I have listed them previously. I will refer particularly to tourism. When I became

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