Page 592 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
health minister, promised in March 2001. It was funded in the May 2001 budget. And when did it open? Six years later, in 2007. Let us look at another health project involving Simon Corbell—the mental health facility that was meant to start in 2005 and be opened in 2007. It has not even started. Not a single brick has been laid for the new mental health facility. Delay, delay, delay.
In arts, let us look at something like the glassworks, which was funded in our last budget in 2001. When was it opened? In 2007. Let us look at the prison that was funded at $110 million in 2001 for completion a couple of years later. It is still not occupied by a single prisoner. It is at far less capacity than was originally planned. It has cost more, and will cost even more in the end, when the full cost is revealed, and it has fewer facilities than what was proposed. This is the problem that we encounter every time we deal with this government. And the list goes on and on.
We talk about delivering social housing. Let us look at Burnie Court. We closed Burnie Court and transferred the people who lived there in 2001, and the process to get rid of it started in 2001. We are now in 2009, and yet, apart from the aged-care units which have been completed for some years—so there is a tick there, Mr Hargreaves—the rest of the site is vacant. There are no residents there, eight years later. That is why we have no faith in this government’s ability to deliver. That is why we are asking them to detail how they are going to do it.
Ms Gallagher started off with the rhetoric that they like to write for Ms Gallagher upstairs and said that Mr Seselja did not start with anything positive and had not said a positive thing about delivery. Well, we had a plan—“Infrastructure Canberra”, the Canberra Liberals’ infrastructure plan. We had a plan to break the bottlenecks, we had a plan to deliver in 10 key areas and we had a plan to have somebody to deliver it. The government, in cheap imitation, have taken a senior public servant—and I note that it is not a senior public servant from TAMS, which delivers most of the capital works, or from ACTPLA, which plans and delivers some capital works; they have taken this person from another part of the government. I think it is in stark contrast to those that would normally deliver this sort of project. They have chosen not to go to ACTPLA and they have chosen not to go to TAMS to look for these things.
Ms Gallagher makes the point that the expenditure went from $76 million under the Libs to $149 million or $150 million under the Labor Party. It has doubled. Well, the budget has doubled in that time. Do the maths.
Mr Hargreaves: Come on!
Mr Barr: It has not doubled, Brendan.
MR SMYTH: The budget is close to double.
Mr Seselja: It’s pretty damn close.
MR SMYTH: That is right; it is pretty damn close. But there is no recognition of this. It is a matter of glibly using some numbers and distorting the facts because the budget is much bigger than it was when we had it. But you still cannot deliver. If you look at
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .