Page 3900 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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I am very hopeful that this new area will separate children and protect them from that as much as possible and also that with the CIN nurses we will be in a position to provide that support to parents at what is an extremely stressful time. We are hoping that the seating will be comfortable and that parents will be able to hold children in their arms. All those little things, if you are having an extended wait, become important. I am very hopeful that that will improve the patient journey for paediatric patients coming to the emergency department.
There is a range of initiatives that I am very pleased with. I know that they will improve the service that we offer to the Canberra community, which is what we are all about. I thank people for their comments. I welcome this first opportunity to actually talk about them because the lack of interest in this part of the appropriation bill has been very surprising to me.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation and Minister for Industrial Relations) (5.41): I want from the outset to indicate my very strong support for this bill and the range of important initiatives that are included within it. However, I could not let the opportunity go past without making some observations on some of the broader issues that have been raised by those opposite in the course of the debate. I think perhaps the most interesting one goes to highlight a theme and a particular issue that I have spoken about before in this place. That is the internal inconsistency of the position that is put by the Liberal Party, particularly the wild variation between the approach of the shadow Treasurer and that of his colleagues on financial matters.
It was interesting to observe during the course of the speeches from those opposite a welcoming of some of the issues, and I am very pleased that the opposition is supporting a number of the initiatives that we have put forward. In some areas they say, “You should have spent more money and spent it earlier.” But then you get this railing that this is a Whitlamesque government that is undertaking wanton spending in a range of areas. Well, it cannot be all of the above. I can understand a consistent line that the shadow Treasurer is attempting to run in this debate, that is, that the priority should be around reducing taxes, and that is it—that rather than increasing service provision, it should be about reducing taxes. That is an entirely legitimate argument to run. I do not happen to agree with it, but I at least respect its intellectual integrity.
What I find a little hard to stomach, and we have seen this over the course of budget debates in the last two years—certainly since I have been in this place—has been the desire of those opposite to walk both sides of the street, to preach about efficient service delivery and the need for the government to account effectively for every cent that is expended and to do so in an efficient manner. Yet, when you undertake exercises that improve efficiency and improve the delivery of government service and certainly seek to ensure that the available funds are put to their best possible use to achieve positive outcomes for the community, those opposite seek to oppose it.
There is no more classic example of that than in the education portfolio, but you see it in tourism, in sport and recreation and in a range of areas where there is this constant cry, “You must deliver services more efficiently. You must put more money into
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