Page 1621 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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Mr Mulcahy: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I am struggling to hear Mr Smyth. Maybe we can just get a bit of order?
MR SPEAKER: Keep the conversations down. Mr Smyth has the floor.
MR SMYTH: Certainly we do not see the restoration of the $4½ million that was cut from tourism last year. The budget papers are not clear about the Stanhope government’s commitment to tourism. That, I guess, is understandable, because they do not understand that they get a return. Access Economics did the report for you, Chief Minister; Minister Barr, go and check the report. For every dollar you spent in 2003-04 you got $5 back. It is not a bad investment. I suspect that you would not get five to one at the casino.
Then we go to other issues. We are still waiting for the detail on housing affordability. It is a vexed issue, and it is facing all governments. Not only is it a vexed issue but it is an issue on which there are widely divergent views. But I will bow to Mr Seselja’s view on this. We have only to look at the history of the impact of gouging on young homebuyers in the ACT—gouging their futures to pay for the inadequacies of the Stanhope Labor government.
What about employment and training? Mr Stanhope stood up last year and said, “This is the number one issue for the business community—skills.” What was the answer? A commission. What has the commission done? It got another half a million dollars; that is what it got. It got more money to do more research. But we are not seeing a significant investment in skills. I heard the head of CIT on the TV last night saying, “It’s great. CIT’s budget has gone up. It is going from about $60 million to about $65 million.” Yes, it is—in 2010. This year they lose more teachers. They lost money last year. The fees were increased. This was all before the skills commission had reported. Again it is the Stanhope mentality and technique: “Let us put the cart before the horse. I do not have any idea; I do not have answers. I will just say the first thing that pops into my head. Even though somebody might come along and criticise it later, even though I get it wrong, I feel the urge to do this.”
What about sport and recreation? We all agree that the greatest peril to the future of this country is the peril in which some of our youth find themselves—through drugs, which Mr Seselja addressed, or through childhood obesity and the early onset of type 2 diabetes. One of the integral things in reducing obesity and keeping the young fit and healthy is sport and recreation. Yet after 1 July there is no doubt that the majority of our ovals will simply be cut off from their water supply. Again, no ideas, no strategy, and no attempt to come up with solutions.
It is not often that I would praise the Bracks government, but the Bracks government have the same problem. Yes, there are water restrictions in Victoria. What did they do? They said, “We want to keep our ovals alive for as long as we can.” They set up community grants to cart water. If you can cart water in suburban Melbourne and country Victoria, surely you can cart water in the ACT. But no. Mr Barr ruled that out: “No, there will be no carting of water because it is too expensive.” It might be expensive, but again the government has not considered the long-term cost at the end of the process. (Time expired.)
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