Page 1220 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Beyond that, the minister promised in September last year that the project for the new bridge—let us accept a new bridge replacement—was to have commenced by now. It has not. The tendering for design has not even commenced. Minister Hargreaves’s milestone to be achieved by the end of this year is clearly not looking particularly good. It is very, very likely now that the new bridge replacement will be put through to the end of 2008 if we are lucky.
Let us look at the other neglects: the Albert Hall maintenance, the $1.02 million immediately needed to refurbish and for priority needs. My colleague will later talk this day, if we get there, on the conservation and heritage needs and the funding needed to address those issues. Those have been neglected.
There is the Griffith library closure—the failure to consult, the failure to have funding in the budget to ensure that Griffith library, as part of a broader ACT network, could have remained open. There is also the closing of the ACT shopfront and the impacts that are imposed on town centre shopfronts as a consequence, the failure to clean up graffiti in this city, and the failure to ensure that grass-growing contracts are achieved on time.
In Conder and Chisholm, we have still got major spillways severely damaged as a consequence of the January 2007 rains. The rubble remains. The banks are exposed, because the footways, the pathways and the concrete overcoats have been cracked and washed away. We now have exposed earth in those embankments, waiting to be washed away by the next winter rains.
There were the school closures; the emergency services run down; the failure to sort out the emergency services; the failure to ensure that bank accounts for volunteer units are squared away; the pay parking debacle; the failure by the government to rule out pay parking at the hospital; our bus system, the worst in the country; and unsafe interchanges. All of these amount to failures by this government. Thank God for the federal budget.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Planning, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Minister for Industrial Relations) (4.40): I am pleased to be able to make a contribution to this debate. I will be drawing upon—and I acknowledge from the start—the work of Rory Robertson, Macquarie Bank interest rate strategist, in outlining the broader picture and some of the issues that those opposite have sought to raise.
It is interesting that the publication of the ABS’s annual report on taxation revenue in Australia from last month has provided Mr Robertson with the opportunity to extend some of his longer term analysis of the federal budget and of federal, state and territory financial relations. He has drawn the following conclusions:
That Canberra—
and I will refer to them as the federal government from now on—
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .