Page 41 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2006
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accounted for in the out years. In every capital works project that extends beyond one year we appropriate in the year of the budget. These are very similar—
Mr Smyth: Your words.
MR STANHOPE: You speak to your shadow Treasurer. You need to have that sort of conversation that you obviously had with your shadow Treasurer in relation to the convention centre before he ticked off on it. You need that sort of conversation in relation to how budgets work.
We have appropriated around about $50 million to get us through until the next year and to the next budget. We have made provision for additional funds of up to $128 million. We have called for expressions of interest for the main construction. That will be concluded in the next couple of months and the prison at this stage is on time and on budget.
MR STEFANIAK: Mr Speaker, I ask a supplementary question. I thank the Chief Minister for that answer. Chief Minister, will you now correct your assertion of 22 November, just to avoid misleading the Assembly?
MR SPEAKER: That is an inference, Mr Stefaniak. Just withdraw that.
MR STEFANIAK: Perhaps if I re-ask the question, Mr Speaker. Will you now correct your assertion of 22 November?
MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, I have to say that I do not have the record of what I said on 22 November. There is no way in the wide world that I would accept from Mr Stefaniak or any member of his government an assertion that I said something before I check it. It is quite clear. I do not know why it is that the Liberal Party adopt this very negative approach. They once supported the prison. In fact, one of their previous ministers, namely Michael Moore—if Moore can be regarded as a Liberal minister—who was the Liberal government’s minister for corrections, was a fierce advocate for the prison, as, of course, were Mr Smyth and others when in government. It is only in opposition that they have decided to oppose the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
Mr Hargreaves: He was very versatile.
MR STANHOPE: Very versatile and with a great capacity for lateral thinking and movement. But it is a mystery to me. It is something that I have never ever understood or thought—
MR SPEAKER: Come back to the subject matter of the question. The subject matter is pretty clear, Chief Minister.
MR STANHOPE: It is a concern to me that the Liberal Party now oppose this major piece of capital works, this major driver of our economy and a major piece of policy reform essentially through infrastructure that will be delivered to the people of the ACT. We have committed $128 million. In whatever language you wish to use, the ACT government has committed $128 million to the construction of the Alexander Maconochie Centre, a state-of-the-art, best-practice prison for Australia. We have
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