Page 2719 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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right, because on page 120 of BP4 there is a Department of Treasury statement about cash flows. You would not see it in there, would you? On page 120 of BP3 there is a chart on user charges. There is nothing in there, either. I congratulate Mr Pratt on being able to get to at least page 120 in either of those two documents.
Mr Pratt: Why didn’t you mention it in estimates?
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, he has made a fool of himself, he has been sprung and now he is trying to shout his way out of it. Mr Pratt talked about there being nothing in the TAMS budget for school maintenance. Either he has not been listening or he refuses to accept the argument my colleague Mr Barr has been putting ad nauseam about there being a consultation process which will conclude in December and we have nothing to say about it in territory and municipal services.
We do not have one school, not one school, Mr Pratt. You have been sprung again because you do not know the process. That is dreadful. Mr Pratt continually shows his ignorance of the budgetary process. He says that there is no provision in the budget for picking up rubbish, whole-of-life matters, maintenance round the territory and that sort of stuff. It is in the base, Mr Speaker. This budget is not a zero-based budget; it is an incremental budget. I think that Mr Pratt ought to go and do budget 101. He would then know the difference between capital—
MR SPEAKER: Direct your comments through the chair.
MR HARGREAVES: I am suggesting to you, sir, that he ought to go and do budget 101 because he ought to find out the difference between capital and recurrent and between what is in a base and what is incremental, because he clearly does not know. What does he do, Mr Speaker? He pops up with a reference to the eyesore of the week. I am glad that he reads the paper and spotted that one. This underpass is not that far from his place, but cannot be seen from the road. Why? It is because it is under Erindale Drive. I accept that it is an eyesore for the people who walk through there. I accept that that stuff should not have been dumped there? But I do not know how many times we have been saying in the media that all people have to do is to call Canberra Connect—for Mr Pratt’s benefit, because he does not know it, the number is 132281—and the stuff will be removed. It is as easy as that. Mr Pratt is not content with having a policeman at the bottom of every garden. He now wants to have a ranger at the bottom of every garden. I have news for you, Mr Pratt: bad luck, you are not getting that.
When Mr Pratt says that the government lacks a graffiti strategy, he does not acknowledge a number of things. The first one is that the examples that he uses are of buildings on private land. They are on private buildings, not our own. He knows the policy as well as anyone, because I have stood here and told him. Is he just so thick that he cannot figure it out?
Mr Pratt: What about Che Guevara?
MR HARGREAVES: Che Guevara is an honorary member of the Liberal Party. You ought to know that, Mr Pratt; you were sharing a cell with him. Mr Speaker, the government does not remove graffiti on private land.
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