Page 768 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 1 May 2007
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also represent examples of this government’s long list of wrong priorities. There are many others and, talking of figures—and we have not completed this yet—so far I have counted up some $236,000 worth of waste by this government, and that is actually growing.
Why is accountability such an important issue? It is often spoken about. In the case of the Stanhope Labor government, however, it seems that the word accountability is just that—a word, nothing else—and accountability for this government is out the window. Let me explain to the government why accountability is so important. Very simply, it is about ensuring that taxes and charges, which this government seems so bent on increasing to pay for its inefficiencies and which are paid by the community, are actually spent in an open and transparent way.
Accountability is about being able to demonstrate to the taxpayer that the government is actually getting the best value for every dollar that it spends. Accountability is about delivering tangible benefits to the people of the ACT, the people who pay for this government’s insatiable demand for increased taxes and charges. Accountability is actually about treating the people of Canberra as the intelligent people they are.
They are not stupid. They can see the waste of this government all around them. They can see the long waiting times in hospitals. They can see the poorly maintained public property and the look of the city, which is a constant cause of concern and complaint to the opposition and many others in this place from ordinary citizens in the ACT. They can see review after pitiful review with very little, if anything, coming out of it. They can see the expensive self-promoting publications on those reviews.
I will give an example—the dreaded and not lamented busway. For starters, the Chief Minister allowed Mr Corbell to spend some $3.5 million on his pet project. It was always the height of absurdity to propose spending hundreds of millions on a busway that would achieve, on the best case scenario, only three minutes’ time saving between Belconnen and Civic. Indeed, $150,000 alone was spent on newsletters about the busway. Is that accountability? I do not think so.
The people of Canberra can see that the Stanhope Labor government is a government of words and not action. More importantly, the people of Canberra can see that this government does not live up to its own standards of accountability. The Labor Party platform for 2003-04 stated in relation to accountability that it would “conduct all financial and budgetary matters in the spirit of consultation with affected parties and demonstrate a high level of commitment to accountability and scrutiny of government”.
In a media statement issued the day before the 2001 election and talking about the people of Canberra, Mr Stanhope stated, “I know they won’t want another three years of waste, mismanagement and fiasco.” I will certainly take him to task there. Under this government the people of Canberra have waste, mismanagement and fiasco. It has not been three years of waste, mismanagement and fiasco; it has been five and a half years.
The government inherited a set of accountability standards from the previous government and a hard-won surplus in the bank, which they have squandered.
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