Page 3050 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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with a timetable, but he did not want to do this. He wanted to get to a situation, sometime on a Thursday night, where he wanted to move the gag.
We knew that this was would happen. It did not matter how fast or how slowly we went, this is where he wanted to get. Mr Coe does remind me that, for the Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services, 40 minutes is devoted to a whole range of things—housing, disability services, care and protection, children and young people, Indigenous, youth policy, multicultural policy; a whole range of things. Forty minutes and it is all over, red rover. This goes to show that there is no care, no concern and no preparedness to look at the issues.
This schedule has been cooked up by somebody; I do not know whom. The only thing that I can say with some pride is that it was not cooked up in the Liberal Party.
Ms Gallagher: No, yours is just to filibuster all night. That is your strategy.
MRS DUNNE: The Treasurer, the Deputy Chief Minister, does not in fact know what a filibuster is, for a start; and to raise issues that are referred to in the budget, that have been discussed at length and reported on in the estimates report, that have been responded to here, that have been raised in questions without notice and questions on notice and not answered, is our job.
One day the Greens might learn that the job is about scrutinising a budget rather than snuggling up and saying, “Anything you want, tickle me again.” What has been proposed here today shows that the government and their cronies on the crossbench have no sense of proportion about what is important in the budget and how those important matters should be dealt with.
The fact is that large amounts of appropriations, nearly a billion dollars in the case of Health, more than half a billion dollars in the case of Education, are being dealt with in 40 minutes; important areas of community services and provision of services to people requiring government housing, community housing, disability services will be dealt with in 40 minutes, because these people just want to go home to their beds.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (8.06): Mrs Dunne has made some very important points and I would have a little sympathy for them if the members on the Liberal Party bench had actually used the last couple of days to debate some of the substance of the budget. I have seen, having sat in the chair and sat in this chamber for quite a lot of the debate so far, on quite a number of occasions now, members opposite stand up and say, “I do not work on this portfolio, I do not know much about it, but I am going to talk about it for 10 minutes.” It is insulting; it is a waste of time; it is a filibuster; it is a complete joke. And they sit here and seem all indignant about our suddenly saying there is not enough time left. Some of the crap that I have seen come out in this debate in the last three days is simply embarrassing.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, members! Mr Rattenbury, I would like you to withdraw that.
MR RATTENBURY: Madam Deputy Speaker, I withdraw that. I am sorry, I got a little animated there. But it is a sense of frustration at the way some of the debate
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