Page 3017 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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had actions in it, almost 50 actions in it. It included nine sectors. But all that, of course, has gone out the window.
Last August, in the lead-up to the election, we had such a damp squib of a document released that it is impossible to find out any strategic objective in that document. It is a contrast to the comments of the then Leader of the Opposition, Jon Stanhope, on 26 May 2000:
… it is essential for solid economic growth to broaden the economic base of the territory.
He knew it was right when he was in opposition but did not care about it when he was in government, and that is so standard of this government. You trawl back through the old documents and they are incredibly amusing as to the things that the government forgot once it came to the treasury bench.
The Stanhope-Gallagher government is full of policy contradictions. It said lots of good-sounding things in the lead-up to the 2001, 2004, 2008 elections but, in the intervening eight years, those lofty ideals and those positive policy objections have been sacrificed.
The Treasurer has made much of the Tony Harris documents that the committee has posted to the website. This year the estimates committee tried an experiment of engaging an independent economic expert to provide a detailed insight into the ACT budget and into particular estimates.
Mr Barr: It is an experiment, is it? When they do not like what he says it is an experiment.
MR SMYTH: If you would simply wait. It is an experiment because it is the first time we have done it.
Mr Barr: You were desperately unhappy with what he had to say, weren’t you?
MR SMYTH: If you would let me finish. Tony Harris, the former NSW Auditor-General, was appointed and I think he did an excellent job. There you go. It was a good outcome. He provided a number of reports—
Mr Barr: Why have you not quoted from it at all in the estimates report?
MR SMYTH: Because it was advice to the committee. It is the same as we did not put in the document as well as the quotes of the committee staff who gave us advice. He provided a number of reports for the estimates committee. And, contrary to the invective of the Treasurer, these reports were valuable for the members of the estimates committee. I certainly found them very interesting. They were used to provide a more detailed understanding of the complexities of the budget.
I say, again, that the Treasurer, when asked if she could give us a detailed briefing, turned the estimates committee down. We just had the MPI on honesty, openness,
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