Page 591 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
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Yesterday, the members of this place were going to get this information in the budget papers. We were going to get it in May: February, March, April, May. “We will work it out and we’ll tell you in May.” Now, I see through the amendment, we are saying, “Once it’s passed, we’ll get some idea.”
It is quite clear that the government cannot detail how they will deliver this. I simply go back to the public accounts committee meeting of 22 January this year. If you want something done, you don’t go to the planning minister, because the planning minister is a failure. You don’t go to the former territory and municipal services minister to get something done, because he failed as well. It seems that the only way you get something done in this town—this is the new process according to the Chief Minister—is to go and see David Dawes, because David Dawes is the only person who gets anything done in the government. It is interesting because the Chief Minister said:
One of the crowning successes of Chief Minister’s has been the appointment of Mr Dawes and the creation of the section. I am embarrassed, when I go around, at the number of companies that are upset that they have made approaches to project facilitation and project facilitation’s books are full.
Why aren’t they going to ACTPLA? They do not go to ACTPLA because nothing happens there. Projects are delayed there because of the process that this government put in place. You go and see somebody in Chief Minister’s and, if you cannot get in to see David Dawes, you cannot get your project through. He goes on to say:
There is an inclination these days, because of the quality of the service, to actually come to David Dawes, and project facilitation is the first point of call.
How extraordinary is that? Here is the admission by a government that have a process that is so appallingly bad that they had to put “Mr fix-it” in. They could not trust him in TAMS or put him into ACTPLA; you have to put him in Chief Minister’s, because that is the only way to get things through the processes that the government have put in place. That is simply the point that we make today: they cannot deliver. This is the fear out in the community. Yes, here is an opportunity, but we know from talking to small business and to industry associations that nobody has any faith that this money can be spent. The Chief Minister continued:
The nature of the service of a project … facility in the government is to cut across any bureaucracy, and any bureaucracy creates bureaucracy and we have seen the need to try to fast-track and get these things on the rails. That is why the innovation of a project facilitation unit has been the success that it has.
There is the condemnation of TAMS and there is the condemnation of ACTPLA and their ministers. They have failed. Are we going to fast-track the fast-tracking process so that we can get this extra $350 million into our economy? That is the question. That is why this motion should be supported. We are saying that we simply want to know how you are going to do it.
You have only to go back to some of the history of these projects—important projects such as health projects. Let us look at the step-down facility that Michael Moore, as
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