Page 553 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 5 March 2008
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did not stand up for Canberra. But the people that I worked for, the people who occupied the treasury bench at the time, stood up for Canberra. They got together with the business community and they thumped the tub. They went to see the Prime Minister as a group. It was not just a matter of being in a little hidey hole and saying, behind their hand, “Kev, can you do something about it?” which is what the Chief Minister has done.
Mr Seselja: Apparently; you can only take his word for it.
MRS DUNNE: Apparently—he says he has done it. But the Chief Minister at the time took the business community with her and visited the Prime Minister. She laid the case out regarding the impact it was having. I challenge the Chief Minister to do the same. I challenge the Chief Minister to take it up with his colleague the minister for environment and culture, Mr Garrett, and do something about the national institutions. I challenge him to take it up with the minister for the environment and do something about the fact that, although at the last election Rudd Labor promised substantial moneys to institutions like the National Botanic Gardens in order to fix their watering system, that money is not forthcoming.
With respect to the estimates process up on the hill earlier this week, Senator Lundy, before the last election, was saying: “This must happen. If it doesn’t happen now, all the trees at the National Botanic Gardens will turn up their toes and die.” And where is she today? This week, she has been asking questions about it and they are all saying, “Senator Lundy, we’ve got to talk to a few people and it’s going very well.” What does she do? She says, “I’ll come back and ask you about that again during the next estimates process.” She is not interested, now that she has been elected for another three years, in standing up for these national institutions. She has had her way. She has had her cuts to the organisation that she hated most in the territory, and she does not care about all those other commitments that she made before the last election.
The only people who will stand up for the people of Canberra, in and out of season, irrespective of who occupies the treasury bench in the federal parliament, are those in the Liberal Party. We were not afraid to stand up to a Liberal Prime Minister when he cut in Canberra—and he cut deep. Unlike this Chief Minister, who says that he has had something to say, but there is no proof of it—
Mr Seselja: What about the minister for tourism?
MRS DUNNE: Then you have the minister for tourism, as part of the cheer squad, making this absolutely indefensible excuse the other day: “This will be good for us.” It is like having a good whipping: what does not kill you will make you strong. That was basically the Andrew Barr defence the other day regarding cuts to the national institutions.
What we see here today, and what we have seen over the past few weeks, is a disgraceful, cowardly government who will not stand up to their Labor mates and who will not do anything in defence of the ACT. They then have the audacity to come in here and take Mr Seselja’s correct motion, a motion which is about the future of the ACT, and turn and twist with this pathetic amendment that vainly tries to shift the
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