Page 5891 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 7 December 2011
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MS GALLAGHER: Not everything is about you, Mr Hanson. As much as you might find that surprising, it is not all about you all the time. This is about a serious matter of efficiency dividends. The government have taken every step that we can to argue the case for Canberra and to advocate it clearly in every single representation we have with senior members of the federal government. Whether they be Labor members or Liberal—and this is an approach we had when we had Liberal members in the federal government—we always argued the case for Canberra. And we will continue to do that. The commonwealth public service is the biggest employer in town. It is important. It is important not only for the public servants who work for it, it is important for the private sector that rely on a lot of the commonwealth’s spend in the ACT too.
This is something that I think the Assembly could have a shared position on. If the motion was factually correct, if the motion was not about political point-scoring, if it was genuinely about Canberra, if it was genuinely about expressing concerns for an efficiency dividend, if it was genuinely about putting forward a unified and constructive approach to making the representations for the ACT and having those heard across the federal government, then the government would be in a position to support it. But this is petty politics being played by a petty opposition.
Mr Hanson: What was Mary’s motion? Come on!
MS GALLAGHER: The difference between this motion and Ms Porter’s motion is that Ms Porter’s motion was factually correct. Perhaps, as I said, if you could have had a factually correct motion, the government would have been in a position to support you. But this is not what this is about. It is regrettable, because you do not actually want the outcome, which is to put forward a unified position from the Assembly about the value that the commonwealth government play in this town and the fact that we would like them to ensure that a disproportionate impact of the cuts is not felt in the ACT.
We also acknowledge that budgets need to return to surplus. I must say that not once in any of the speeches from those opposite—and they talked about honour and truth a lot—did one of them mention the impact of the GFC on budgets. If you listened to Mr Seselja, the Liberals left and there was all this money in the bank, and then, oh my goodness, a few years later, there is no money and we are borrowing. Yes, it is a little bit in between, perhaps, around the global financial meltdown that occurred and the fact that we have the strongest Western economy in the world, from what I can understand, because of the actions that were taken.
If you look here, the actions that we took, similar actions, injecting money into the economy, not cutting it, and look at where we are today, retaining our AAA credit rating, having a strong economy, second only to the resource-rich state of WA, that shows that we have the skills and the capacities to deliver and those opposite do not.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (6.49): It is interesting to look back at the amendment passed by the Assembly in August and that was voted for by the Greens and the Labor Party. They were quite happy to have the Leader of the Opposition stand up and
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