Page 1422 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
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year out, ACT families—average working families—are going to be paying at least another $200 on top of their already inflated water bills because of the delay and neglect of the Stanhope government.
Ms Gallagher kept saying, “Well, what was it like under the Liberal Party?” It is really quite simple. Mr Smyth interjected. It was slightly disorderly so I will say it here. The legacy of the Canberra Liberals when we left office in 2001 was a budget in surplus for the first time since self-government. Under Gary Humphries, in 2000-01, for the first time since self-government, the ACT had seen a budget in surplus. It was the first time.
We also had much shorter hospital waiting lists than we do now. For all that Ms Gallagher can say about how terrible the hospitals were et cetera, the waiting lists were roughly half of what they are today for elective surgery. That is the Liberal legacy. Since 2001, what have we seen? We have seen a few years of surplus followed by years of deficits, which will now blow out to seven years of deficits, if we are lucky, because of the reckless spending of the Stanhope government and people like it.
I will give a couple of examples. We have seen blow-outs in costs everywhere. Ms Gallagher, for instance, proposed that we should build a new youth detention centre—much overdue, much needed. Originally, I think it was $25 million. Before you knew where we were, the minister had gone back to cabinet for another $40 million. It is a $44 million edifice—
Ms Gallagher: Forty, I think, or maybe 44, 42?
MRS DUNNE: Basically, she went to cabinet and said, “I need as much money as you have already given me,” and she got it. At the same time as we were spending $40-odd million on Bimberi, we were spending $1.5 million just to transport a demountable to Quamby, plus all the costs of re-establishing that. Only this week we have seen that the provision for the secure mental health facility is going to increase by $3 million. Those are just a few in Ms Gallagher’s portfolios in the time that she has been the minister in this place.
There was just a little one today. The Chief Minister was talking with some pride about $900,000 worth of bicycle path in Jerrabomberra. I said to my staff: “Refresh my memory. How long was that bicycle path in Jerrabomberra that the Chief Minister was so pleased about?” The answer was 800 metres. That is over $1,100 a metre for a bicycle path.
I do not build many bicycle paths, but I do know a little bit about concreting and associated things. If you do the sums, as I have, the materials that would go into that could not cost the territory any more than $300,000. When you work out how long the bicycle path is, how wide the bicycle path is, how deep the bicycle path is, the materials cannot cost—even if you go for high-quality concrete, which we are probably not doing; it is probably asphalt—more than about $300,000. So how does it cost three times more than that? It cost three times more than that, Mr Assistant Speaker, because nobody in this government is good at cost control. No-one is good at
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