Page 1417 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010

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Ms Gallagher: How many did you build?

MR SESELJA: Madam Assistant Speaker, it is getting difficult to hear. If she is going to heckle, she can heckle me and not have conversations across the chamber.

Ms Gallagher: Come on, Zed.

MR SESELJA: It is far easier for the flow—

Mr Hanson: You’re not bullying Brendan, are you?

MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mrs Dunne): Order, members!

MR SESELJA: Rather than three-way heckling going on—

Ms Gallagher: It has been robust.

MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: I call opposition members to order. Ms Gallagher, you will come to order. The opposition members will cease interjecting. Mr Seselja has the floor.

MR SESELJA: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Ms Gallagher can address her interjections to me.

MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: No, that would be disorderly, Mr Seselja.

Ms Gallagher: But enjoyable.

MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: It would still be disorderly.

MR SESELJA: One lane to the largest growth area in Canberra. Who would have thought that that was a good idea? I do not think I have spoken to anyone outside of that cabinet that actually thought, “No, this is a red hot idea. This is a good idea. We should do it.” We point to large blow-outs, we point to the $240-odd million blow-out in the dam, we point to the big blow-out on the GDE, and then we point to small blow-outs. When we point to small cost overruns, they say, “Oh, well, it’s only $100,000,” or, “It’s only half a million dollars,” or, “It’s only a million dollars.” All that adds up, and it is their attitude to spending. FireLink—$5 million for nothing. The busway—$5 million for nothing. That is $10 million on projects where we have absolutely nothing to show for it. What could have been done with that $10 million in Disability? What could have been done with that $10 million in Health? What could have been done with that $10 million in education or, God forbid under this government, what could have been done with that $10 million in maybe not raising taxes as much as we have seen over the last few years? All of those were options.

This is a government that lost a couple of million dollars because it could not collect rates. It forgot. The government forgot to collect rates, so it lost a couple of million bucks as a result. That is incompetence. That is a failure to manage. That couple of


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