Page 2807 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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I will actually tell you, Chief Minister, through the Speaker, that the people of the ACT, without a doubt, would choose the trees in their suburb. The residents of perhaps my favourite street in all of Canberra, Blacket Street—a modest street, but made majestic by the trees there—will choose the trees in their street over the trees that the Chief Minister wants to plant on Dairy Farmers Hill. The people in street after street in north Canberra, in south Canberra, in Aranda, will choose the street tree in their area—perhaps the one that is under stress, perhaps the one that is dying, perhaps one that needs something doing to it—over the wanton misspending of money at the International Arboretum and Gardens.
The quantum of money that has been thrown away on Jon Stanhope’s vanity project is a disgrace when we cannot have all that we would like to have in this budget and the previous budget.
Members interjecting—
MRS DUNNE: If we go back to the very first time that the arboretum appeared in the budget—
Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MRS DUNNE: I think it was the 2004-05 budget. The government committed then to spend $10 million to develop the arboretum.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mrs Dunne is trying to be heard.
MRS DUNNE: The government committed to spend $10 million and on top of that over the years there has been $6 million here and $7 million there and now in the outyears there is $26 million—
Members interjecting—
MRS DUNNE: So we are now up to well over $40 million on Mr Stanhope’s personal tree—
Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Sorry, Mrs Dunne, one minute. The clocks, thank you. Gentlemen, let us hear Mrs Dunne, please. She has been waiting a long time.
Mr Stanhope interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Mr Stanhope, thank you.
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