Page 4419 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 November 2005
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Housing—budget funding
MRS BURKE: My question is directed to the minister for housing. On Wednesday last week, when I asked you whether you would meet your budget commitment for a $30 million capital injection of funding into the public housing system, you said:
It is highly unusual for governments to pre-empt either government discussions or budgetary outcomes.
However, on Tuesday of that week the Chief Minister promised to fund all election commitments. Minister, why did you fail to confirm that you would meet this commitment, when the Chief Minister promised to do so the day before?
MR HARGREAVES: One, I did not; and, two, the Chief Minister is wiser than I am.
MRS BURKE: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Minister, will you confirm that you will meet your 2004 election promise of energy efficiency upgrades in ACT housing properties?
MR HARGREAVES: I thank Mrs Burke for reading one of the pages of the leaked cabinet document. I hope that, if she is doing that, she tables it so as not to be in breach of the motion. The Chief Minister said that we would be honouring the election promises. You’ve got to understand—
Mrs Burke: You just said you didn’t.
MR HARGREAVES: Would you like to answer my question for me?
Mr Pratt: She’d probably do a better job. I’ll line up. We might get a bit of transparency here.
MR HARGREAVES: We would get more transparency because we would look straight through this bloke. The other day in the house the Chief Minister indicated that this government would honour its election promises. However, Mrs Burke would like to see them honoured in the first five minutes of a budgetary term, or an election term, or a government’s term. I remind Mrs Burke that we have three years to go. With respect to housing, had the Liberal government not left the incoming Stanhope government with the housing stock in such a parlous state—
Mrs Burke: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The minister has not at all addressed the matter of energy efficiency upgrades in ACT housing.
MR SPEAKER: You asked him whether he would be doing it and he is explaining—
Mrs Burke: I just want the answer to that question.
MR HARGREAVES: I was just about to do that, but the impetuous Mrs Burke let her mouth run away again. She will now have to catch it up. I was talking about the parlous state of housing stock. That goes to energy efficiency. We have the oldest stock in the
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