Page 986 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 25 February 2009
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MS GALLAGHER: Well, it has been clear in my mind. I do not know if it has been clear in yours, but it has been clear in mine. The aims are: secure jobs, look after businesses, deliver some cash before the budget and make sure that we, as the ACT government with the resources available to us, do what we can to look after our local industry. I do not know how hard that is for you to understand. That is the intention. If we want to call it a stimulus package, we can.
Mr Smyth: What is hard to understand is a Treasurer who says, “Don’t get your hopes up.”
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Smyth!
Mr Smyth: You have said it is too small and not to get your hopes up.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Smyth!
MS GALLAGHER: You were not at the press conference. The context of those comments was that compared to the nation’s stimulus package of $42 billion, this will be a very modest package compared to that. That is my comment. That is the honest response from an honest Treasurer about what we are trying to do here. If you want to throw scorn on that and criticise it, do what you can. We have a limited capacity to respond. We are responding in the best way we can. (Time expired.)
MR SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, a supplementary question?
MRS DUNNE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Treasurer, why are you proposing to introduce a third appropriation bill when you have admitted to the community that it will not stimulate the ACT economy?
MS GALLAGHER: My answer to that would be: what jobs would you like to see go? What businesses would you like to see lay off staff? What projects would you like not to see happen?
Mrs Dunne: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: my question was about the Treasurer’s assessment that the third appropriation bill would not stimulate the economy. It is not an opportunity for her to go into a rhetorical riff about what the opposition would do. It is about what the Treasurer would do and why she has taken particular action.
MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order, Mrs Dunne. I think the intent of the question is clear and I think the Treasurer is responding in kind.
MS GALLAGHER: Thank you, and that was not a very good point of order from Mrs Dunne. I notice that it only took about 23 seconds, and usually she likes to take a much greater proportion of the time allotted for a minister to answer.
Seriously, what part of any investment in our economy at any level by government at the moment is not a good idea? If Mrs Dunne wants to have an argument about whether it is going to have a stimulatory effect or not, what we are trying to do has a
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