Page 406 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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Mr Seselja: We made savings.
MS GALLAGHER: You made savings to pay for your spending, mate. It was not to make savings to put the budget in line—$45 million this financial year. You guys are concerned about an appropriation of $16 million. You were going to spend $45 million this financial year. You were then going to go up to $68 million, up to $85 million, and, by 2011-12, you had announced spending of $98 million. But you all saw what was happening here. I can see that, because you really modified your spending based on it. Honestly! It is all very well to be very smug now, because you saw it all happening! Maybe that line could hold true if your election commitments had not exceeded ours. Your commitments exceeded ours. In fact, they were double our spending commitments.
Mr Smyth: And we adopted bigger surpluses.
MS GALLAGHER: Bigger and stronger, yes; we get back to the boy thing. We get back to the boy thing: bigger and stronger. I get it; I hear it. But the other secret that you are not talking about is the slash and burn of your savings program. So, not only are you announcing savings—
Opposition members interjecting—
MS GALLAGHER: You can always tell when you are getting under the opposition’s skin. They all start interjecting in the hope that nobody can hear. What we have got here is double the amount of spending, and then 1½ pages of slashing services from the government at a time when the government cannot afford to slash services. That is what you get. That is your response to the global financial crisis that you all saw coming, that you all knew about. And you all knew the impact on our local economy. That is your response: double the spending, slash government services and jobs, because you all saw it coming. This is another Seselja special where he says that Treasury gave him an undertaking that there would be no job cuts.
Mr Seselja: I didn’t say they gave me an undertaking. I said it is clear in their figures. Have a look at their figures.
MS GALLAGHER: Go back to the time Treasury indicated—and I think indicated publicly—that they had not given any undertakings that there would be no job cuts from the Liberal Party’s savings measures. In fact, they confirmed that they had no discussion with the Leader of the Opposition or his office on the issue of job cuts. So, jobs went, slash and burn, nurses to go from the Alexander Maconochie Centre, public servants to go from CMD, public servants to go from Shared Services.
Do we forget the jobs to go from here, and to go from here straight away? The ACT Assembly had an efficiency dividend linked to them: Legislative Assembly efficiency dividend, $156,000 this financial year, growing to $318,000 in the outyears. That is not jobs, no; that is not jobs, is it?
Mr Seselja: There is extra spending in the Legislative Assembly, too. You did not read that part?
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