Page 63 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2010
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MR DOSZPOT: My question is to the Treasurer once again. Why has the ACT government run out of ideas on how to improve its performance?
MS GALLAGHER: I love this. After being beaten up for a couple of years on failing to consult, talk and do all the rest of it, here we have a situation where we are going to take time, we are going to talk, we are going to consult—
Mr Doszpot: And a lot of money. You are going to spend money.
MS GALLAGHER: Not a cent has been spent, Mr Doszpot. Again—
Mr Seselja: You are not going to spend money?
MS GALLAGHER: An opposition that has been in opposition for so long and is clearly destined to stay in opposition—if you try and understand what we have done here, you will see that we have not spent a cent. We have a restructure fund and we have put in place a panel of approved providers, a number of consultants. If the expenditure review committee wants to commission work, it will go and commission work from them. It has a lower limit of $200,000 and an upper limit of $4½ million. No expenditure has been made, and EREC has been working for almost 12 months now. You have no idea what the government’s ideas are in terms of this budget.
Mr Smyth: And clearly you don’t either.
MS GALLAGHER: Those discussions are being had around the budget cabinet table, which is somewhere you guys will never sit.
Mr Smyth: Crazy ideas; consultants’ ideas.
MS GALLAGHER: These are difficult discussions. I note that the opposition have failed to engage completely in the budget. I have not received a submission or any ideas from them about their savings.
Mr Hanson: How many did Labor put in when you were in opposition?
MS GALLAGHER: I know they always say, “Go back to the savings we identified in the election.” They have not actually moved on from losing the election in 2008. Those savings you identified were to pay for your election commitments; they were not to deal with the structural problems facing our budget post the global financial crisis.
Mr Smyth: We offered to sit down with you.
Mr Seselja: It was not hard to find savings, though, was it?
MS GALLAGHER: You had no ideas at all. We are working through—
Mr Seselja: It was not hard. We could do it from opposition and you need to pay someone $4½ million to tell you.
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