Page 2926 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010
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MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, please!
MR RATTENBURY: I was interested that Mr Stanhope felt this was a motion targeted at him to gain some sort of political advantage. Frankly, in our own party room we are. Here comes the Liberal Party trying to wedge the Greens on trees. Perhaps it is not all about Mr Stanhope; it is also about us. Everyone is in on the action today—
Members interjecting—
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Order, members! Mr Hanson, would you please turn the volume down. Mr Rattenbury, if you are going to continue to bait them, you will get a big fish.
MR RATTENBURY: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Let me finish by saying that I implore the Assembly to support Ms Le Couteur’s amendment. It is a sensible amendment. I think it goes to the heart of what is being debated here, which is to ensure adequate resources for our urban forest renewal program at the time it is needed, when the commissioner for the environment has finished her current study. We should simply accept this and move on. The Liberal Party should acknowledge that Ms Le Couteur has made a positive contribution here.
The whole line of Mr Stanhope going down in history as Canberra’s number one tree killer is one of the most preposterous things I have heard Mr Smyth come out with in this chamber since I have been here. You can fling all the insults you like. I have my disagreements with Mr Stanhope, but that one is really off the dial, Mr Smyth. I would urge you to support the motion. I look forward to moving forward on this issue in a positive manner.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.07): I thank Ms Le Couteur for engaging in the debate and bringing forward her amendment, which we will not be supporting. Before touching on the amendment, which I will do in a moment, it is worth looking at some of what Mr Rattenbury had to say. Again, we do not hear from the Greens on where they would take the money from. I suppose we are left to surmise where they would take it from because they said their budget would be different. You wonder whether or not, in the Greens’ view, it would be better that this money came from, say, the roads budget.
We know Ms Hunter’s views on roads. She believes that the Gungahlin Drive extension should never have been built. I am sure that the people in Gungahlin, west Belconnen and north Belconnen who rely on the Gungahlin Drive extension and are desperately waiting for it to be duplicated, as it should have been from the outset, would be interested to hear that they have got, on the one hand, a Labor Party who are about a one-lane road and, on the other, the Greens who are about no road from Gungahlin. We could assume from those statements that the Greens would be advocating that the money come from the roads budget. We can only assume that that would be the Greens’ position. They do not want to say that and they also do not want to say where it would come from. They are in favour of the spending—
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