Page 5210 - Week 12 - Thursday, 27 October 2011
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Mr Smyth touched on the fact that this has been done before. It has been done before by the Labor Party. Last time they were shown to have completely gotten it wrong—and not by a little bit, but by hundreds of millions of dollars. We all remember Jon Stanhope sweating at the press conference with his “it is a fact” document that proved to be hundreds of millions of dollars out. We remember that when we announced a policy for lower class sizes, the claims of how much it would cost coming back from the government turned out to be tens of millions of dollars out—not just a little bit, but tens of millions. In the case of the “back in the red; it’s a fact” document from the Labor government, it was hundreds of millions of dollars out.
We will not stand for a government coming out and making up numbers—fabricating numbers so that they can try and undermine an election promise. If you cannot make the argument, disagree with the policy. Go ahead. Say you do not like the policy. Say why you are happy to charge people more when they cannot afford to pay their rego. Say it. That is fine. Criticise the policy. If you are going to talk numbers, base them on facts. Do not base them on a guesstimate; do not allow incorrect information to stand.
That is what has happened here. It is familiar, isn’t it? It is familiar. Mr Smyth touched on it before the 2004 election. It was: “There will be no school closures. Well, I did not say that. It was just a spokesman.” It was never corrected—never corrected. You cannot just leave these things out there and expect that you can then run away from them later on.
The government has for six days allowed this to stand. The Chief Minister plucked numbers out of the air. This calls into question her credibility. It calls into question her credibility going forward, where every time the Greens or the Liberal Party announce a policy, no doubt the Labor Party, whether it is through Ms Gallagher, Andrew Barr or one of the other ministers, will be putting out numbers. They will be coming out and saying, “This will cost $20 million; this will cost $50 million; this will cost $100 million; this will bankrupt us.” They have no credibility.
No doubt members of the media and others will remember the fact that on the very first election policy they made the numbers up. They had nothing to base it on and they plucked a number out of the air. That is what this is about. We are now told that there will be no documents tabled. We are calling for documents to be tabled and we are told that Ms Gallagher has none. They have not even bothered to do the work. She based it on nothing. She did not base it on any facts; she did not base it on any briefings; she did not base it on any documentary evidence.
That is no way to run a government. That is not the way to instil confidence. The community has the right to expect that when the Chief Minister comes out with a number like that, it is based on fact, it is in fact true. She has failed at the first hurdle. The Chief Minister has failed at the first hurdle. Her word now, and the word of her government on these issues, particularly on election costings, particularly as they relate to the opposition, will all need to be viewed in that light. They will need to be viewed in the light that the first opportunity they had, the first opportunity this Chief Minister had, she made it up.
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