Page 3962 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 5 December 2007
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additional $5.5 million a year, a foreshadowed $50 million for new buses and, as we have previously indicated, a range of other measures that will enhance the infrastructure and attractiveness of ACTION and public transport for the people of Canberra.
MR SPEAKER: A supplementary question from Mr Seselja.
MR SESELJA: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Chief Minister, why did you allow your minister to run down ACTION services so badly during 2006?
MR STANHOPE: Well, I do not believe they were. A number of decisions were made in 2006 as a result of a determination of mine and my government to put the ACT’s budget on a sustainable footing. We have essentially achieved that. In the view of the Liberal Party and the opposition in this place, we have been far too successful and the surplus is now far too strong; the budget is too sustainable.
Of course, their immediate knee-jerk response or reaction to that was essentially to just slash taxes and not worry about service delivery. Actually, their record in government is to run down services. We saw it in relation to their running down and refusal to fund mental health. We see it in their refusal in government to fund disability services. We see it in their refusal in government to actually fund security measures on public transport.
Mr Seselja: I raise a point of order as to relevance, Mr Speaker. I asked him why he allowed the minister to run down ACTION services in 2006.
MR SPEAKER: Come to the question.
Mrs Burke: He did nothing at all.
MR STANHOPE: He did not do that. The point I was making was relevant background, Mr Speaker. The government made a number of decisions, as reflected through the 2006-07 budget. They were decisions of government. They were decisions, in fact, that were very much a response to my intervention as Treasurer and as Chief Minister.
Mr Smyth: So you did intervene. Okay.
MR STANHOPE: Well, I am the Treasurer. I brought down the budget. Of course I had a significant role in the nature and the structure of the 2006-07 budget. To that extent, Mr Hargreaves implemented decisions that the cabinet or the government had taken in relation to service delivery. As everybody knows, there was a significant reassigning or redefining of expenditure to ensure that we could maintain service levels at the highest level possible and that we could continue in a sustainable way to maintain the level of services which we have achieved in government after repairing the damage of the Liberal Party in their period in government when they ran down health and disability services and mental health and safety of public transport and almost every other area of government service delivery. They closed 114 hospital beds.
MR SPEAKER: Come back to the subject matter of the question.
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