Page 930 - Week 04 - Thursday, 3 May 2007
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Mrs Burke has just asked me will I please say that every credit card transaction led to an identifiable tangible benefit to the ACT taxpayer. In other words, when I utilised perhaps a credit card to purchase transport to attend Audrey Fagan’s funeral, there was a tangible benefit. In other words, when an official attended a conference to deliver a paper to expand the common knowledge or understanding of a particular issue or practice in the ACT, there was a tangible benefit to the ACT. You want me to expend hundreds of thousands of dollars in administrative time and expense to prepare a tangible benefits report in relation to every—
Mrs Burke: The taxpayer deserves—
MR STANHOPE: Mrs Burke says the taxpayer deserves me to provide for a tangible benefits report every time a credit card is utilised. Well, that is bunkum and, of course, I have absolutely no intention of doing that. I cannot possible be expected to answer today in relation to the hundreds of credit card transactions. You might say, “Here is a credit card transaction, Chief Minister, dated 15 November 2005 involving a lunch which Mr Zissler attended. What was the tangible benefit of that lunch?”
Mrs Burke: Take it on notice and tell me what the benefit was. Well, what was it?
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mrs Burke!
MR STANHOPE: Mrs Burke, I was joking. I was being facetious. I give up. I will get a tangible benefits report for Mrs Burke on Mr Zissler’s lunch on 15 November 2005. What a joke!
Schools—closures
DR FOSKEY: My question is to the minister for education and concerns the impact of the closure of the Tharwa primary school. What savings have been delivered to the ACT government through the relocation of ex Tharwa school staff and students and the reduced costs of maintaining the Tharwa school grounds and building?
MR BARR: The answer to Dr Foskey’s questions is: those savings that were outlined in the budget in 2006-07.
MR SPEAKER: Supplementary question?
DR FOSKEY: Thank you very much.
Opposition members interjecting—
DR FOSKEY: Apart from the fact that the fridge is still going. Can you provide the Assembly with a breakdown of the ongoing costs of all the schools that were closed at the end of last year and of savings to date? And, please, I want figures this time.
MR BARR: Those properties that were transferred from the education department to the Department of Territory and Municipal Services are no longer within my responsibility. Where—as is the case with Tharwa—we are still operating a preschool
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