Page 405 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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I have said already—and I think it has been pretty public—that we have asked for submissions from ministers. In fact, I have received a submission from the Speaker as well. Mr Speaker, I will be writing to you about how we make that a more formal process through the budget process. It used to happen through Mr Berry. It probably was a little bit of a slip-up in terms of the request to ministers not going to the Speaker, and we will fix that up. But I have already asked for that.
Some of the roundtables are informing some of the discussion that we are having on whether or not the ACT Assembly needs to look at a third appropriation this financial year. We need to look at other ways that we can support our local economy. That would be an appropriation focused on our response to the global financial crisis and the effect it is having on our local economy. That work is underway. This was never meant to fill that gap, although there are a number of elements in here that we are happy to perhaps call part of a stimulus package, even though they are very small.
Mr Smyth said he has many questions unanswered. I was of the understanding that we had answered all of your questions. If we have not, I am happy to take a list of them and see what we can do through the course of this evening. I did not get a full list from you, but I understand my office and certainly Treasury officials had been working very hard to address all of the questions that you were asking. We had provided a briefing to you. We then provided another briefing to the opposition yesterday at lunchtime, in response to a request from a number of other members. So we have, in light of this very short time, tried to fit in with members’ needs and provide as much information as possible.
From Mr Seselja, we had what will be known, I think, as a Seselja special where—
Mr Seselja: You like my speeches, don’t you, Katy?
MS GALLAGHER: No. There is a recasting of history to suit the arguments of the time, with headlines being brought out and operating in a truth-free zone, if I might say so, where allegations are put that I have said we did not know about the global financial crisis. I do not think you will find anywhere that I have said that we were not aware of the global financial crisis. I think that you will find that I have said we were not aware of the full impact of the global financial crisis. In fact, the newspaper headlines that you have brought down all appeared during the caretaker period when the ACT government quite rightly was not being briefed by the ACT Treasury on any impacts that they were seeing from the global financial crisis, nor were they briefing the opposition, as should occur during the caretaker period.
Mr Coe: It has been six weeks since then.
MS GALLAGHER: Mr Coe interjects. Of course, you saw it all coming too, Mr Coe. You had it all as part of your election campaign: “I can foresee everything that is going to happen.” This is the line of the opposition. They are the only political party in the country that saw everything that happened. It did not change their behaviour. They saw it all. They did not tell anyone. They kept it all to themselves. Now that it is unfolding, they say, “We knew everything; why didn’t you know?” It is interesting in that context to have a look at the little spending spree that the Seselja opposition was on during the election.
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