Page 3678 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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then how are we to explain that, under Gary Humphries as Chief Minister, we invested in mental health at a level lower than any other place in Australia? Is that down to John Howard and the federal government? You cannot have it both ways. You are actually saying that the fact that Gary Humphries refused to invest in mental health had nothing to do with the commonwealth government. The fact that we have invested in mental health, that we have actually adjusted this imbalance, that we have undone the damage that Gary Humphries and the Liberal Party did, is actually nothing to do with us. It is all to do with the commonwealth government. If you believe and accept one, you have to believe and accept the other. The legacy of Gary Humphries as Chief Minister under a Howard Liberal government is the lowest level of expenditure on mental health in Australia.
He left us, of course, with the implications of the Gallop commission of inquiry into disability services. We have Mr Stefaniak here applauding the level of service delivery, infrastructure and services that we enjoy as a result of the commonwealth government. How then does Mr Stefaniak explain that, under Gary Humphries, with the assistance of Michael Moore of course, we were left to address the Gallop royal commission of inquiry into disability services?
We had under Gary Humphries as Treasurer—I think for a period but certainly as Attorney-General and the legal adviser—the redevelopment of Bruce Stadium. This is another financial issue, a legacy. When one gives consideration to the impact of the commonwealth government on the economic standing and status of the economy of the ACT, one is left to ponder the relationship between Gary Humphries and the commonwealth government that led to the absolutely disastrous, illegal financial arrangements in relation to a reconstruction of Bruce Stadium that led a $12 million capital project to come out, I believe, somewhere in the order of $80 million. To whom do we attribute that? Gary Humphries? Gary Humphries and the Liberal Party laugh these days about that flirtation with illegality. The most damning report ever produced in relation to sheer, simple, economic and managerial incompetence was Gary Humphries’s involvement in that.
We remember the direct role—I remember this through estimates hearings at the time, and it is another issue of economic management and this relationship with the commonwealth—and Gary Humphries’s very direct involvement in the Kinlyside development, one of the most serious scandals to impact on land management development within the ACT. I can go back to Hansard in relation to Kinlyside and I can go back to Gary Humphries’s complicity in the remarkable arrangements that were put in place. It is, I believe, in relation to issues of land and planning in the ACT the most remarkable and I think—
Mr Mulcahy: Mr Speaker, I have got to respond to the Chief Minister’s remarks in a moment and I am struggling to find anything constructive.
Mr Hargreaves: There is no point of order here, Mr Speaker.
Mr Mulcahy: Yes, there is. It is not relevant. He is digressing from the debate and it has no relevance to the motion before the Assembly.
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