Page 3026 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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half an hour, the social housing and some of the sustainability measures that Ms Hunter was alluding to in her speech. When are they going to be delivered? The Greens have got to have a look at what is being delivered in this budget and at whether they are being sold a bit short.
We will await 2010 with great interest. We will see whether Ms Gallagher is up to the job in the next budget, as she has clearly failed on this one. I know it has been hard work for her. She was on the radio the other day complaining that she was in the estimates committee for 20 hours. Twenty hours is a long time, but there is $3.7 billion in appropriations, so she got through $185 million an hour. That is not bad work. If she is complaining about the level of scrutiny through the estimates committee, having been in there for 20 hours, it is really not such a hard task.
When it came to the estimates report that she was so critical of, that it was such a bad report, when she was asked on Triple 6 to name just one of the recommendations she did not like, could she do so? No. She did not have the report with her, so she could not remember one of them. So with respect to this report that was so horrifying that she could not agree with it, she just could not remember the recommendations.
Ms Gallagher: I don’t think I used the word “horrifying”. Are you verballing me again, Jeremy?
MR HANSON: I am happy to withdraw the word “horrifying”. Certainly, you did not like it, did you, Ms Gallagher, I think it is fair to say.
Ms Gallagher: No, it was a hopeless report; I said that.
MR HANSON: I think it is fair to say that. What we see here is a government that is going to commit us to seven years of deficits, but they are only temporary, so it says, “That’s okay; don’t worry about it.” A lot of the stuff that was signed up to in the Greens-Labor agreement is not being delivered.
Ms Gallagher: I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “temporary”. I will go back and have a look.
MR HANSON: That is aspirational.
Mr Seselja: How do you define it?
Ms Gallagher: I think if you read the budget plan, it says a “long-term recovery strategy”.
MR HANSON: “We’ll have a bit less accountability because we’ll cut the Auditor-General.”
Mr Seselja: So it’s long-term deficits then?
Ms Gallagher: A long-term recovery.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Could you stop the clock for a minute.
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