Page 2608 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 June 2005
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be very interested to know—that it was indeed a Labor member of this house who advised me that Dr Foskey was living in public housing. I need to say this because I am not going to sit here and take this any longer. I have talked to Dr Foskey about the issue. Unfortunately, she knows my position.
DR FOSKEY: Don’t be so condescending, Mrs Burke.
MRS BURKE: I listened to you, Dr Foskey. I knew many months prior to any of the above that Dr Foskey lived in public housing. If I had chosen or wanted to be as vindictive and malicious as the Labor Party and launch a personal political attack on Dr Foskey, I could have done so; but I did not.
Mr Hargreaves needs to see the value of the policy his New South Wales counterparts are adopting. He needs to wake up and he needs to know that things have to change sooner rather than later.
MR QUINLAN (Molonglo—Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development and Business, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Sport and Recreation, and Minister for Racing and Gaming) (8.53): Very briefly, I would personally like to dissociate myself from this unholy imbroglio that has taken place and advise Dr Foskey that I do believe in the philosophy that I read somewhere—and she said, “People ought read.”—that radicals read radical literature and conservatives do not read at all. I think you have been wasting your time.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.19—Department of Justice and Community Safety, $84,381,000 (net cost of outputs), $54,539,000 (capital injection) and $104,194,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $243,114,000.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra) (8.55): Mr Speaker, this government, the Stanhope government, has not managed this budget well at all. Indeed, over the past few years it has spent more than it has budgeted for. Now I think the people of the ACT are starting to see what happens when a government is undisciplined. The planned operating loss of $91 million is not to be believed. I think we are the only state or territory which does not have a surplus budget.
On its track record of the last few years, there has been an average blow-out of $172 million per year every year. We now have to face up to less revenue, after the heady days of skyrocketing stamp duty, land taxes, rates and GST. We find the government has not put aside the money for the inevitable decline in the fortunes of the economy.
In the justice portfolio we see both the folly of the government’s inability to manage money and its ideologically driven policies and programs which privilege some sectors and individuals over others who are equally deserving. Let us have a look at the consequences of the Stanhope government’s inability to manage the way it administers justice. The government’s priorities are illuminating. The courts and tribunals are receiving a cut of around five per cent in the forthcoming year. This is on top of the $900,000 which was ripped out of the Magistrates Court last year and which saw the loss
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