Page 3024 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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Mr Smyth: Seven years, yes.
MR HANSON: Seven years? My goodness!
Mr Smyth: Biblical, isn’t it?
MR HANSON: Yes, it is. It is quite biblical in its term. Anyway, that is the new definition of “temporary”. So with the long-term targets that we see littered throughout the budget in terms of the strategic indicators, I just wonder what “long-term” means. If “temporary” is seven years, then my God, I wonder; I suppose it is—
Mr Smyth: It must be biblical—seven times seven.
MR HANSON: Seven times seven, that is right. That is your lifetime, isn’t it?
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, we can do without the commentary.
MR HANSON: So instead of long-term targets they should be lifetime target indicators. But part of the reason they say that they have got no plan is that, “Well, we’ve got to go out and consult with the community.” I thought that is the way the budget process works: you go and do some consultation—and they certainly did that; they called for some consultation—then you make decisions and then you make plans.
This government criticises the opposition for not having a plan when it is in opposition and then delivers a budget like this and says, “Basically it’s business as usual; we’ll tell you next year what we’re doing.” It says that any efficiencies that it has in there, any savings that it has in the budget, are coming next year and it is going to come back to us with a plan once it has done the consultation. It just shows that this government does not have a plan.
The whole sham about the consultation is their way of saying, “Yes, we know we don’t but we’ll come up with a bit of an excuse for that.” If they genuinely believed in consultation then I think they would have agreed to my motion about Calvary and they would have said, “Yes, we’ll need to consult.” They say they have got to go out and have broad consultation about cuts in the budget, but they are not going to have any consultation about Calvary. So it is a pretty inconsistent measure, and we know why: they do not have a plan. Unfortunately, the Treasurer is not really up to the job of making the hard decisions, is she?
It is good that Mr Barr is in the chamber, Madam Deputy Speaker, because we saw the history unfold when it came to school closures. The minister for education at the time was Ms Gallagher. With respect to perhaps some schools that needed to be looked at for their efficiencies, what did she say? “No, we’re not going to close any schools; we’re not going to do it.” That was because she was not up to the job.
This is Mr Barr’s assertion. He basically said as much in the evidence he gave to the inquiry into the school closures. It was up to Andrew to come in, save the day and cut
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