Page 1267 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 25 March 2009
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MR DOSZPOT: No, on statues, Jon, on statues. The state of the ACT budget remained very strong for the next six or seven years, despite the efforts of the Stanhope-Gallagher government to destroy—
Mr Stanhope: Do you understand how absurd that statement is?
MR DOSZPOT: through reckless spending and wasting the opportunity provided by the $1.6 billion revenue boom to equip the ACT economy to withstand economic shocks. The ACT was left in a situation—
Mr Stanhope: Pratt by name, prat by nature, two of them—how amazing.
MR DOSZPOT: Madam Deputy Speaker?
Mr Stanhope: You are a prat.
MR DOSZPOT: Can I ask for a little bit of support?
Mr Stanhope: From me? I’m trying to support you, Steve.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Stanhope!
MR DOSZPOT: The ACT was left in a situation where it has less capacity to respond to external economic shocks.
Mr Stanhope: The only person with capacity in the opposition.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Stanhope! Mr Doszpot has the floor.
MR DOSZPOT: We have had more than seven years of failure—
Mr Stanhope: Where were you, Steve?
MR DOSZPOT: If you do not want to listen, Jon, I can understand why you do not want to listen, but you have to, or you can read it in Hansard later.
Mr Stanhope: I am praising you, Steve.
MR DOSZPOT: We have had more than seven years of failure by your government. We prepared the ACT economy to cope with economic shocks—listen—be they internally generated or external to the ACT. With the ACT election out of the way, however, we began to see a different picture emerging. On 11 December 2008 a report in the Canberra Times revealed that the ACT was facing the prospect of a budget deficit for 2008-09. The following day another report in the Canberra Times revealed that the ACT Treasury had warned the Stanhope-Gallagher government that a deficit was possible for 2008-09.
While the global economy was in freefall, the Stanhope-Gallagher government remained in denial. This was demonstrated most clearly when the Treasurer released
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