Page 398 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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We will not be content with the smug self-satisfaction of saying we are pursuing accountability, while letting a bill involving tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money be passed without giving it due consideration and examination. As such, I will be addressing the major issues addressed by the Treasurer in her presentation speech. We will then be examining the line items of the budget as they apply to our respective portfolio areas.
First, I would like to address one of the underlying issues and one of the underlying claims of the Treasurer—that is, prior to the election, that the financial crisis was unexpected. I have brought along, for the benefit of the Treasurer—and she has already seen them while I was waiting to speak—some of the headlines during the election campaign so that we can go through them. What we have heard from the government is that they were able to promise that they were going to keep the budget in surplus because they did not know about the financial crisis before the election. They did not know about it when the Chief Minister promised to keep the budget in surplus. On Wednesday, 1 October 2008: “World trembles”, “Global markets in meltdown”, “Case firms for big interest rates cut”, and “Bush’s last-ditch plea”. Of course, we saw the massive drops in the share markets around the world. That was on 1 October.
If you look inside the paper, you see this: “Labor $1 billion to rebuild hospital system”. Here is another one from during the campaign: “Reserve cuts to the chase—decisive action counters global strife”. Inside we see: “Libs plan change to public art landscape”, which was, of course, a saving, which is something we did not see from the Labor Party at any stage during the campaign. That was a saving that we had there. The headline was “Libs plan to change public art landscape”, in stark contrast, of course, to the Labor Party.
Then, of course, during the campaign we saw the headline “Black Friday”. In the article it was stated: “No-one who is alive has seen anything like this before. There is nowhere to hide.” That was on the front page of the Canberra Times. Of course, the government tell us they did not know about the global financial crisis when Jon Stanhope promised to keep the budget in surplus.
It is funny if you look inside the Canberra Times for that day, because in the last one I mentioned we saw savings. We see the headline: “No gym, but jail gets $100,000 art of glass”. There you go: we have more spending on very worthy projects from the government! We did not get to respond to this because I think the debate was gagged. We did not get to respond to the Treasurer’s claims about Lehman Brothers—
Mr Smyth: On the anniversary of the Human Rights Act.
MR SESELJA: On the anniversary; there you go. We did not get to respond to the Treasurer’s claims about Lehman Brothers collapsing. Of course, Lehman Brothers actually collapsed prior to Jon Stanhope’s statement on 17 September when he said, “We will keep the budget in surplus.” So let us just put that to bed. Let us put to bed the government’s claims that they made their promise not knowing about the global financial crisis. We all saw the headlines every day during the campaign. The government kept spending and, in fact, they did not bother to find one saving during the election campaign to pay for their promises.
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