Page 2234 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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The Liberal Party stands and huffs and puffs about our capacity to deliver major projects and to deliver capital. Compare the record: a decade ago, the Liberal Party in government, $64 million; last financial year, $314 million. Of course, they did improve. In 1998-99, they delivered $64 million. In 1999-2000, in their last year in government, they delivered $76 million. It really was quite significant; they improved by $12 million between 1998-99 and 1999-2000, from a massive $64 million to a massive $76 million.
What did we deliver in the last financial year? $314 million. What have we budgeted for in this budget? $1.5 billion over the next five years. That is not actually counting our rolling capital works budget. That is over and above that.
Not only should we dwell on that disparity, that comparison, that chalk-and-cheese analysis of the Liberal Party’s capacity not just to budget for capital but to invest in the infrastructure that the city needs but we do need to reflect on how well did they deliver that $64 million worth of capital; how well did they deliver that $76 million worth of capital projects.
Mr Barr: They were good with green paint, apparently.
MR STANHOPE: That is right. As we said—most particularly Mr Gentleman and I, as we brainstormed furiously last night trying to conjure up those capital projects that are the legacy of 6½ years of Liberal government, of course that legacy, that $64 million—what springs to mind? Immediately what springs to mind, of course, always is Bruce Stadium, promised at $12 million, delivered at $84 million four years later, after breaching all sorts of laws and with all sorts of irregularities, breaking the Financial Management Act, bringing the territory into disrepute. Bruce Stadium springs to mind.
Other aspects of their capital program—
A member interjecting—
MR STANHOPE: Of course, the hospital implosion. That was a capital project. They actually imploded the hospital. And we will not go too far into exactly how that was received, how that particular project was carried out.
There was, of course, as Mr Gentleman and I, in our brainstorming session identified, feel the power. Mr Gentleman did actually provide me with some quotes from Mr Kaine, Mr Mulcahy’s predecessor in that particular position of expelled member of the Liberal Party. There is something of a history here of the intellectual force of the Liberal Party actually being forced to the crossbench.
But of course, it is the futsal slab, it is feel the power, it is the Impulse Airlines hanger that was never occupied because the airline went broke; it is all of the other things that they did; it is the 114 beds that they closed at the Canberra Hospital; it is the 700 units of public housing that they actually sent to the never-never; the things that they did; the swimming pool that they promised but could not build—
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