Page 517 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 8 March 2011
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120 places this facility would create as a result of the merger of Akira and Gumnut, they would only have 10 to 20 places available to them. How did they feel? Anger? Betrayal? The feeling of being misled perhaps? How about bamboozled? Might I add, this facility is yet to open.
Yet the list continues. The Alexander Maconochie Centre is another good case study. Recall the inauspicious 11 September government opening of the AMC, which just so happened to coincide with the day prior to the government going into caretaker mode. And in true ACT Labor fashion, Canberrans learnt shortly after that that the prison was not ready to open and would need another six months before it could take its first prisoner.
When it finally was operational, we learnt that costs for the AMC were 60 per cent higher than in any other jurisdiction in this country, costing approximately $504 per prisoner per day. But the real clincher was that the government promised a 300-capacity prison and as, we now know, truth be said, the prison could only accommodate 245 people.
On the issue of public financial management, ACT Labor’s stated policy has been:
Responsible and fair financial management … ACT finances will be employed to ensure a high level of service provision, protection and assistance for the disadvantaged and maintenance of public assets so that Canberra continues to be a city in which people choose to work and live.
So what has the ACT Labor-Greens alliance delivered on the topic of responsible and fair financial management? Here is a cross-section: Cotter Dam enlargement, cost increase from $140 million to $363 million; Canberra Hospital new car park, cost blowout from $29 million to $43 million; TAMS, failure to manage budget as per the Ernst & Young report; and the $80 million, I believe is the tune, to which ACTION needs to be subsidised each year.
While on the subject of ACTION and broken promises—and this one I think comes down to the Chief Minister—the wheelchair-accessible school bus is proving to be a very serious issue for one of my constituents in Tuggeranong who has been promised for over 12 months that her problem of getting her disabled child, in a wheelchair, onto a school bus will be addressed. It is proving to be caught up in the ministerial buck-passing between three ministers, disability, education, and the Chief Minister’s own involvement through ACTION.
With regard to the youth detention centre, there is the budget overrun from $40 million to $42.6 million, with serious ongoing management problems. Again, the list goes on and on. What is insidious is ACT Labor’s promise and lack of delivery to protect and assist disadvantaged members of our community as per the earlier quote from their policy platform.
Recall in 2004 Ms Gallagher, now the Treasurer, promised, “There will be no school closures”—these were the election promises—and then, a few short weeks later, very systematically, after the election, the government began to close schools. It started
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