Page 552 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 5 March 2008
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review—their review of the work done by the National Capital Authority and whether there are overlaps in the planning area.
You have to remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, that these cuts to the National Capital Authority were made before they worked out what the authority did. These are the Senator Kate Lundy, Labor senator for the ACT, memorial cuts. It is squaring Kate away for not getting a job in the ministry: “What can we do? She’s been around for a long time, she’s got a fair few mates in the building industry. What can we do for Kate? I know; we’ll do what she asked and we’ll cut indiscriminately out of the National Capital Authority.” That is what has happened in that regard.
The performance of the minister for territories, when confronted with this, was abysmal and appalling. He had no idea what his department was doing, he had no idea what the National Capital Authority did or why it did it, and he had no defence. He did not say something indefensible; he just had no defence to offer regarding the cuts that were announced and are being made without looking into what the National Capital Authority does.
As Dr Foskey said, most of the money for the Griffin legacy has been taken away, which means there will not be a significant upgrading of Constitution Avenue. Basically the only thing that has remained in terms of capital works is the roundabout at Russell, which is a significant and important piece of roadwork which needs to be done as a matter of public safety.
We have seen a range of cuts that will have a significant impact on the territory. Mr Mulcahy is right: we should not be afraid of efficiencies and, in a climate when we have low levels of unemployment in the ACT, we should be able to do something to accommodate those people who find that their jobs in the commonwealth public service have suddenly disappeared. But the question is: what is this government doing about this? What is the Chief Minister doing about this? We hark back to what happened in 1996, when there were significant cuts in the territory following the election of the Howard government. I am proud to say that I worked for the people who stood up for Canberra. The Chief Minister, the Minister for Planning and the Deputy Chief Minister at the time went and thumped the table. They did get some concessions. They did not get as many concessions as they would have liked but they stood up for Canberra. They had the guts to criticise decisions that were not to the advantage of the ACT, unlike this Chief Minister, who is nothing more than a quisling when it comes to standing up to his mates in the Labor Party.
The clear message from this is that the Rudd government can ride roughshod over the Stanhope Labor government and they will just turn around and say, “Do it to me again.” The whole problem is that no-one has the guts to stand up and say, “Hey Kev, you’ve got it wrong.” This is not fair, it will have a disproportionate impact upon Canberra and they just do not care because they think that, no matter what the Rudd Labor government does in Canberra, people will keep voting Labor. They take the people of Canberra for granted and, as a result, Jon Stanhope comes out and says, “Well, it’s really very terrible but I understand their situation.”
We understood the situation in which the Howard government found itself when it was confronted with the Beazley black hole back in 1996, but it did not mean that we
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