Page 117 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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Their position is made tougher by a government who are indifferent to the money that they waste on their pet projects instead of being a good government that look after the people of the ACT. They are both worthy of censure. (Time expired.)
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.43): I am closing the debate. I thank Mr Smyth for his contribution. This is worthy of censure. I think that the standards of the Greens that in particular apply to the Labor Party are becoming lower and lower as the term goes on. We see it again this time. Let us just put this into some context.
This was proposed to be the largest infrastructure spend by the ACT government in its history. The Cotter Dam blew out from $120 million to $363 million. The Labor Party wanted to spend even more than that. Even when the Cotter Dam cost blew out threefold, this government wanted to spend more than that on this government office building. So it is deserving of our scrutiny and we have given it our scrutiny.
At every turn in seeking to scrutinise it, the government has been dishonest. They have not told the truth. Because they were dishonest and because they were pig-headed, not only can the community not believe anything they are told by this government; if you are going to make it up, if you are going to not tell the truth on projects as large as this, how can you be trusted on any of the projects you claim you want to deliver? As a result of that we have seen millions of dollars wasted.
We are talking about millions of dollars. We sort of become a bit immune to this government and its wasting money. But let us put these several million dollars into context. This several million dollars could fund a small school for a period of time. We could see capital works like significant upgrades to our local facilities, such as our local ovals, being delivered for this several million dollars.
We do not know exactly how much has been wasted. We can guess. It is probably upwards of $5 million. The government will try to say it is less, but can we believe them? Can we actually believe them on this when they claimed with a straight face to the Assembly, “We have got to do this and it will save us $34 million a year”? That was not true, Mr Speaker, and I do not think anyone who has spoken in this debate has claimed what they said was true.
By the Greens backing the government on this, they are endorsing the lies. They are endorsing the dishonest behaviour and they are endorsing what was a not insignificant mislead. It was not like it was a sort of a slip of the tongue. We had documents. We had public servants and ministers all going out there and saying: “No, no, no, this is the analysis. It will save us $34 million a year.” They were not telling the truth. They were not honest.
They were being dishonest with Canberrans over a $430 million proposed project. As a result of that, not only can they not be trusted, but they have wasted millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money—money that we have to now pay back because our deficit is larger than it otherwise would have been.
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