Page 5208 - Week 12 - Thursday, 27 October 2011
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MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, you will have your chance. You will have it again.
MS GALLAGHER: No, I am not making it up, Mr Smyth. That is the situation. Go and listen to the audio transcript. Your staffers were there with their phones out. I presume they have got it. Those comments are correct. When the government has the costings, when they are provided—indeed, when I am Acting Treasurer, if those costings come in, I will be very happy to provide them to the Assembly. I imagine they will show that that promise is in excess of $10 million.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (4.58): We will be supporting this motion this afternoon. I note that it has been put forward by Mr Smyth and that the Chief Minister has just said that she will be supporting the motion as well.
It is coming up for election time. We have all talked in this place about the election costings bill. We do need to get on with that work. We do need an election costings bill in place before the next election. I know that we from the ACT Greens are keen to have that in place. We think that if we are going to be going out in an election campaign putting forward promises, putting forward initiatives, we should have the costings there to show people how much these particular initiatives will cost. Then they can make their decisions as to who they vote for not just on the merit of the initiatives but also on the basis of what that may mean around taxpayers’ dollars and expenditure.
In the meantime we do not have that in place. That is some months off now. Therefore it is important that when statements are made about others’ initiatives or policy announcements, there is some rigour around costings and statements.
We have just heard from the Chief Minister that there appears to have been a difference between what she has said that she said in that press conference, what may have been reported and what seems to be coming from the Liberal Party. But at the end of the day what we need to get back to is that we do have some rigour around statements that are made. It is no secret in this place that the Greens have had issues around this recently with statements made by the government in regard to our private rental standards bill. We have not been impressed at all. We have been asking for those costings; we have been asking to see the rigour that has been put around that. So it would be no great secret that we believe that this is an issue that does need to be tackled.
We are coming into an election year; things are going to get feistier around here. Obviously people will be jostling for positions, jostling to put their suite of initiatives and programs out there. We need to have some honesty and integrity in all of that. If we can work hard towards that, I would be supportive. Therefore, as I said, we will be supporting this motion this afternoon.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.02): I thank Mr Smyth for bringing the motion forward and I thank the Greens, through Ms Hunter, for their support.
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