Page 1238 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 May 2006
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MR SMYTH: This is the man who says he is guaranteeing human rights but then directs us on what we must do. Mr Speaker, is the budget really that bad? And the answer is yes, the budget is that bad.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, sit down, please, for a minute. Members, could you bring yourself to cease the interjections so that people who might be interested in the speech can listen?
Mr Stanhope: Nobody is.
Ms MacDonald: Not even his own members.
MR SPEAKER: That still does not warrant interjections.
MR SMYTH: Mr Speaker, thank you. The real danger here is that yet again the Labor Party will bring this Assembly into disrepute by the way they have gone about this and by what they have done today. What they do is bring undone all the hard work of the last 17 years to try and get people to take this place seriously. They say, “We’ve got the numbers; therefore we can do it.” I do not see anywhere in their platform a line that says, “We will stack the Assembly committee process.” I did not hear the election promise “we will make all of the committee chairs Labor.” I did not see anything in what they took to the election to, to the public, that said that they would shut down scrutiny.
This is a travesty of justice, Mr Speaker, and it is a travesty that the people of the ACT will come to understand. It just goes back to the point: if you were fair dinkum about this and you really thought this was the appropriate thing to do, you would have done it last year. This is what you would have set up for the life of your Assembly. But you did not. You at least tried to hold on to some vestige of fairness and openness and honesty, and at least appearance. But this year you cannot. This year they cannot because they know that they are facing monumental blow-outs.
There is an Auditor-General’s report that says that, if the spending of this government goes unfettered, the deficit may well end up being, I think, $580 million. So perhaps the Auditor-General is wrong as well! But there is a stench, a smell—it is the fact that they have blown their budget and they are going to do anything; they will attack anyone. If anybody speaks out, they will be attacked. If anybody questions them, they will be attacked. It is the vindictive nature of an arrogant government—an arrogant Chief Minister who has attempted to hide his ineptitude, his poor financial management and his lack of management of his portfolio as minister for public administration.
We have to set up an estimates committee. We do not accept the amendments that have been made, and that is unfortunate. I commend this motion to the Assembly. Only time will tell how it works and how well it works—because it has been nobbled by this government.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.
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