Page 2834 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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What is incorrect and unfair about that? There is a list. She says:
The Dissenting Report demonstrates the authors have little comprehension of the ACT economy and the drivers of key budget outcomes. Further, it chooses to ignore expert advice … in an effort to undermine the Budget’s …
It goes on and on, and it really is just a load of drivel, quite frankly, that the Treasurer has presented here, in her efforts to cover the failings of the chair, Ms Hunter, to do her job—a job which she was paid for. Of course, the chair of the estimates committee is paid and her job is to provide guidance—not to give an index to the estimates. That is the problem.
But there are recommendations in the dissenting report. For instance, when you go to the ACT government whole-of-government office building, the recommendation is that the minister present to the Assembly a detailed business case for the whole-of-government office project. I looked at the two-page summation of what the Treasurer has said about the dissenting report:
The Government considers the report from Mr Seselja and Mr Smyth lacks balance, objectivity, evidence, research, accuracy and relevance to the issues concerning an Estimates Committee.
We asked for the business case on this, but, of course, we have not got it. We have not got a business case for the whole-of-government building. We have not got any of the work that backs it up. Perhaps, Madam Treasurer, you might like to provide some objectivity, evidence, research, accuracy and relevance in regard to the whole-of-government office building, because we could not get it from the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister did not like answering questions on this at all.
It really is important. Indeed, Ms Le Couteur gets it, because she raised the issues about the departments that are located up and around Dickson and what will occur on Northbourne Avenue and asked where the 3,475 public servants who will be housed in the whole-of-government office building will park. Will they park? Will they not? Will there be bus services to cater for them? Will there not? What will happen to the empty buildings?
There are 442 coming from ACT Health, so that is just across Civic, and 307 from ACTPLA, so they are coming down Northbourne Avenue from Dickson. The Chief Minister’s Department is just across the road. DECCEW is coming down from Macarthur House. Education and Training, I assume, are coming from Tuggeranong, so there will be some more on the Monaro Highway and more on the parkway. Then there are justice and community services, 65 from the Land Development Agency, 76 from Land and Property Services and 568 from TAMS—they are all up at Mac House. Treasury is probably just coming across the road. But what we do not have is a business case and what we know is that the two scenarios that the government has looked at show that they are so very close in terms of their effect that you could go either way without any trouble.
Mr Seselja: They can’t tell you.
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