Page 1109 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 3 May 2006
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South Wales, your government needs answers on how to get the government back on track. You need to take the community with you on this as well.
Interestingly, given the refusal of Mr Stanhope to release the Costello report, we have got the Chief Minister authorising Mr Costello to give briefings on his report to very selected people. However, many significant organisations certainly have not been included in these briefings. Mrs Burke has been saying, “What about the community sector, for example?”
There is no sense of engaging in community consultation. I have already mentioned your lack of consultation—and I quoted some of the statements you made prior to the 2001 election—and the complete failure after the election. But I am amazed that you are not taking the community into your confidence here. It is inevitable, with such a major report as this, that there will be increasing calls for the release of it because a report like this is too significant to keep secret. Whilst you do not release it, you will continue to have rumours about critical issues such as changes in the estimate budget outcomes, including budget deficits as high as $190 million, rumours about the prospect of redundancies—and you do not seem to even have any idea of the numbers in your public service—and all sorts of other rumours.
It is too significant to keep secret. I am sure this report contains a great deal of valuable information and information that will assist the government and the community in discussing important policy issues. It may even help prepare the community for certain unpalatable tasks that have to be undertaken in the course of the budget. That is probably one of the main reasons.
I recall this document back in May 1990. Yes, there was considerable discussion of the problems facing the ACT. Yes, the Alliance government probably tried to bite the bullet there. It was stymied very much by other groups in the Assembly. Yesterday you said that one of the problems with minority government is just that.
Mr Stanhope: Absolutely.
MR STEFANIAK: Thank you. I am glad you concede that. You are not a minority government and you certainly do not act like a minority government in some of the arrogant things you do in this Assembly. But you have got a big chance here to live up to your rhetoric—to do what you told the people of Canberra you would do in 2001 and continue to say you will do but do not—and take them into your confidence and release this report. Let us have a public debate about what belt-tightening measures we need.
Let us put that to one side, because it is not the point of this motion, which is the chronically incompetent state you have got yourselves into. I still find it amazing how you can go from 99 senior executives to 149 or whatever and an extra 2,000-odd public servants—and not really know about it—blow a perfectly good surplus when you have got increasing GST revenue and come up with the huge problem you have got yourselves into. You have got yourselves into a huge problem. You need, for the sake of the territory, to live up to the rhetoric you have been talking for the last few weeks and get yourselves out of it and put the territory on the right track.
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