Page 4683 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 20 October 2010
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MR BARR: And you lost a seat too. Your vote went backwards. So long may you continue with this approach to public policy because people see through it. They know that you are walking both sides of the street on this. You cannot simultaneously argue for harder and faster cuts to the territory budget and then when any proposals are put forward during a consultation process run little campaigns against it.
It is entirely predictable. It is what oppositions do. We are aware of that. Life goes on, Mr Speaker. The education department will continue to deliver high-quality services and they are committed to doing so into the future. (Time expired.)
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.32): Mr Speaker, we see here a reflection of the values of this government in this process, both in the way they have treated people within the ACT who require special support and in the way that they have got here and the way that Andrew Barr dismisses them.
We might just cast our minds back a couple of years to when the government refused to get its spending under control. It refused to look for savings. It refused to even make basic efficiencies in areas of clear wasteful government expenditure. What we said at that time was that if you do not find those basic savings, there will be much more pain down the track. This is the pain that is now being delivered on the community because of this government’s mismanagement and because of its decision not to control spending over so many years.
Those are the values of this government. We can look at the raft of measures where they have wasted money; we can go through the long list. And they continue to do so, even in this year’s budget. We can go through the list. There was the $5 million on the busway and the $5 million on FireLink, things that were not delivered. There was $5 million on Rhodium again. There is $26 million extra that they want to spend on the Arboretum over the next few years.
This is a government that says to us: “We are not going to save money on the arboretum. We are not going to save money on government advertising. We are not going to save money by making areas like TAMS more efficient when they blow their budget every year. What we will do is save money by going after disabled kids.” They are the values that are being expressed by this government in its approach. It is saying: “Bad luck; you have to cop it. We are not going to look for the savings in other areas which have often been pointed out to us.” It is saying that we are not going to get our spending under control in questionable areas of expenditure—the sorts of things that you might do in really good times but you certainly would not do when things are tight.
And because they have not bothered to do that, they are saying: “Well, lump it. Those kids who require special support—bad luck; things are tight.” But they are not tight enough to not continue spending money on the public art on the roadside or save any money from the extra $26 million that they are going to spend on the arboretum over the next four years. They are not that tight.
This government and this minister will impose these efficiency cuts on some of our most vulnerable citizens. This is a values test, a values test that they have
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