Page 2794 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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ACTPLA—a fairly significant proportion of the budget, fairly significant portfolios in the budget. But of course the professional manner has given us a dot point summary of what happened in the hearings but has not given us any recommendation—no work, no recommendations, no consideration, no thought, nothing in the report really, except a useful guide to the Hansard of the estimates process. And I am sure people will note that.
Oddly enough, in the dissenting report, recommendation 1 is:
… before committing to discretionary spending on projects such as the Arboretum, the ACT Government should ensure that all the basic needs of the community are being met.
That is a reasonable recommendation. Recommendation 2 is:
… given their importance to the Community, the Government should divert funding from the Arboretum to the replacement of street trees to maintain the unique look and feel of Canberra’s suburbs.
So people may well question who in this place actually stands up for the suburbs and who stands up for the trees. It is clearly the Canberra Liberals who do. It is clearly not the Labor Party and, surprisingly, not the Greens in this case. That is most disappointing. Then again, we are used to third party insurance fraud, are we not?
It is interesting that the Chief Minister has chosen to rip out this $11 million from the budget, rip it out root and branch no doubt, to cover the other mismanagement that is so chronic in this budget. There is no budget plan. It will be interesting to see what savings are achieved, given the $18 million or $19 million splurge last week in the Treasurer’s advance where a number of the departments were unable to control their budgets, including TAMS and ACTION, that yet again had to be bailed out because the government cannot control its spending. It is the attention to detail from the minister and from the government about how they deal with the TAMS budget that really needs to be questioned.
The Chief Minister, when he spoke, said it is a transport budget but you really do not see a plan in this budget for a considered delivery of all elements of a transport network, whether it be roads, whether it be public transport, whether it be things like cycling, whether it be walking paths. When you have got a minister who just seems to have to spend money, without any concerted plan or any considered plan—and certainly one of the criticism around the city at the moment is that there is so much going on in such a higgledy-piggledy fashion—people are querying what is going on.
You have got enormous roadworks on Gungahlin Drive because of the ineffective management of the budget to deliver that project. A lot of traffic really is coming down Northbourne Avenue. What do we do? We start a project on Northbourne Avenue and London Circuit at the same time.
To compound that, there is still no action on the Majura parkway. The poor relationship that the Chief Minister has with the federal government, his federal Labor colleagues, is not doing the people of the ACT any service. It is a national road. It
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