Page 531 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 10 February 2009
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him do it. He probably could deliver it, oddly enough, but in an interesting insight and a reflection on planning, and TAMS delivers most of the infrastructure, it is not an officer from TAMS or Planning who will head up what looks vaguely like Infrastructure Canberra, another Canberra Liberal—
Mr Seselja: It is a poor copy.
MR SMYTH: Yes, it is a poor copy, Mr Seselja. It is another poor copy of a Liberal policy. They have now been brought to book on this because they cannot do it. When we asked today, “How will you make this work?” the Treasurer had no idea. You just cannot trust the Stanhope-Gallagher government on their planning processes. You cannot even trust them to diversify our economic base. We asked them for years and years to do something with the money they received in the good times, and they did nothing.
There is a Canberra Times editorial going back which says, “Squandering the good times, do something with it.” We had an economic white paper that has now been relegated to the economic white paper bin. Their tax policy was “squeeze until they bleed but not until they die” and this narrow approach has now put us significantly at risk because the people that they were squeezing cannot give any more because the property boom has dried up, and the government is left with nothing to answer the needs of the people of the ACT.
Of course, when Dr Foskey was in this place and sitting in that seat, she had the temerity to suggest that we could have an industry based on sustainability industries, and we had ridicule from Mr Hargreaves, and a Chief Minister who did not understand. So you just cannot trust the Stanhope-Gallagher government to not waste taxpayers’ dollars. Let us read the litany of them: FireLink, at $5 million; the busway that will never be built; the Grassby statue; Rhodium, which we will get to later in the day, and which has been eroded by the mismanagement of the shareholders. And the list goes on.
In some ways you can say this is a package to bail out the states. We had confirmation from not one but two ministers at question time, when Mr Hargreaves said, “Yes, we can deliver because we’ve already been planning this stuff.” He is going to take the projects that the government had already been planning and fund them out of this stimulus package—which, of course, is against the spirit of the package. You cannot trust Labor on economic matters.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (5.06): While the Greens support the nation building and jobs plan in principle and agree there needs to be an injection of funding into the economy to help the country in these difficult times, it is important to note that a Senate inquiry is presently examining the plan, and it appears that some adjustment may result. We understand that, following the inquiry, it may be as late as Thursday before a vote is taken on the plan.
In the past few days, some leading economists have criticised the plan and called for other options, such as tax cuts or payroll tax relief, to be included rather than cash handouts. As always, it is impossible with cash handouts to ensure that the neediest receive the benefit, and handouts do not necessarily protect or create jobs. Creating
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