Page 767 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 1 May 2007
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Mr Mulcahy, who politely pointed out to him that Mr Rudd had brought in a policy which is virtually identical to one that Mrs Dunne brought in in 2004. The Chief Minister pooh-poohed that policy then. Now we wonder whether he supports it or not.
I do not recall Mr Mulcahy saying anything remotely like the Chief Minister’s assertion that the ACT Liberals are adopting that as a policy. It is a case of give him an inch and he will take a mile. He has great difficulty adding two and two without getting some amazing figure which certainly is not four. He never fails to amuse me with his statements about our so-called promises and how much money they are supposedly costing. My figures are completely different from his and, I would submit, a lot more accurate.
On taking the role of Treasurer last year, the Chief Minister said in a media release issued on 18 April that his new administrative arrangements would “maximise accountability and ensure greater rigour”. I think the government has failed on both counts.
Where is the accountability and rigour? The Stanhope Labor government has wasted the hard-won surplus the previous Liberal government left in the bank when the Stanhope government came to office. The Stanhope Labor government bleats that the cost of providing services is increasing and responds not by creating efficiencies or cost savings but by actually putting on more public servants and putting up taxes and charges. Indeed, in April last year the Chief Minister seemed surprised when he found out there were 2,500 extra public servants and he could not really account for that. That is pretty basic.
Where is the accountability and rigour when the Stanhope government takes the credit for a booming ACT economy when it is actually the Howard Liberal government’s economic management that has delivered that booming economy, not only in the ACT, but Australia wide? Where is the accountability and rigour when the Stanhope Labor government closes schools without so much as a whisper to those in our community who will be affected? Where is the accountability and the rigour when the government slashes business services? It is business that employs people and develops innovative products and services that put Canberra into the world business arena.
Where is the accountability and rigour when the Stanhope Labor government stops issuing capital works reports because a bureaucrat says they are not useful? The general public, and certainly members of this Assembly, found them a useful way of ensuring accountability and holding a government to account. Where is the accountability and the rigour when the Stanhope government wastes $72,000 on a statue no-one, except one or two people, like Mr Hargreaves, actually wants? The government spent $72,000 on poor old Al Grassby’s statue. On that one even the Chief Minister is getting cold feet about whether he wants it or not. Where is the accountability and rigour when the Stanhope government cannot provide answers to simple questions on expenditure?
These are only some of the examples of this government’s failure to abide by its own principles of accountability and rigour, as outlined by my colleague Mrs Burke. They
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