Page 2147 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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Mr Gentleman: I can feel the power now.
MR STANHOPE: Feel the power; Impulse Airlines went broke before the hangar was built; Bruce Stadium, the biggest disaster in capital works management in the history of self-government; Canberra Hospital—these are the Liberal Party’s capital project successes. This is what they hang their reputation for success as managers of the capital program on. What a joke!
In this last year, we delivered over $300 million of capital on the ground, more than the Liberal Party managed to deliver in five years. And in that five years, the only projects that spring to the mind of anybody in this room are Bruce Stadium, the demolition of the Canberra Hospital, the construction of the hangar for Impulse Airlines, which then quickly went broke—actually, before they ever got to take possession of the hangar—and Mr Gentleman can think of “feel the power”. I am sure that, if we continue to think along these veins of Liberal Party capital legacies, we can probably dredge up a few more.
So let us scotch this nonsense of the mythical Liberal Party capacity to deliver capital. They never funded it; they never delivered it. And the stuff that they did deliver, in their own inimitable way, can be summarised as Bruce Stadium, the demolition or blowing up of the Canberra Hospital, the construction of a hangar for an airline that went broke before the construction was completed and, of course, some interesting little developments like the futsal slab and “feel the power”. I knew that, if we thought a bit longer, we would come up with the other Liberal Party success stories in relation to the delivery of capital works. There they are. The futsal slab tops it off.
There is a delay. There is always a delay. There is always a rollover and there is always a good reason for a rollover in relation to delivery of capital works. We see it in relation to the granting of development approvals and appeals that are made.
We see it in relation to the GDE and in relation to court action. There was a delay of a year because the matter was taken to court. What would the Liberal Party have done? Simply ignore the court action and the orders of the courts? It is quite simple. The GDE was delayed because the government was directed by the courts not to proceed.
There are a whole range of issues. Sometimes it is as simple as the weather. Other times it is as simple as the need for payments to be made and payments not to be made in June as opposed to July et cetera. There have always been delays and rollovers. There always will be. The explanations are as simple, often as not, as the weather.
But this bunkum and nonsense about the Liberal Party’s record and the Liberal Party’s capacity are actually destroyed by any mere glance at the record in relation to the capital that was delivered by the Liberal Party in government. They have no record of delivery of capital works, because they did not fund any. And when they did get around to their miserly program, in every single case that you can dredge up, that you can think about—and we have done it just now—there was an appalling mess for the people of Canberra to have to deal with.
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