Page 32 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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MR SESELJA: I will withdraw. I will withdraw. We now have a situation where the opposition, in pursuing a motion about a half billion dollar backflip and millions of dollars wasted, cannot criticise this government, cannot criticise this government in the standards of this Assembly. We will criticise this government. We will use whatever language you want. They misled; they deceived; they did not tell the truth.
Why did they not tell the truth? It was because they had to justify this project that they were so committed to. They went out there and they said: “This is the best project. We are going to spend $430 million on this office building.” We said: “Hang on, don’t you think there are better things to spend this money on? Don’t you think it would be better if, instead of building an office, perhaps you invested in health, education, roads or local services?” In response, they said: “No, no, no, this will help. This will actually help us invest in those very services.”
They claimed savings—how much in terms of savings? The misleading, deceptive and dishonest claims that were made by Jon Stanhope, by Katy Gallagher, by Andrew Barr were that they were going to save $34 million a year. One of them is going to have to stand up and tell us why they are abandoning a project now that they claim would have saved us $34 million a year.
What government would actually walk away if they believed that? The truth is that they did not believe it. They were happy to put out misleading statements. They were happy to put out incorrect information. They were happy to mislead the Assembly and the community time and time again on this project, this project of significant interest to the community.
We saw just how sensitive they were about their porkies. We saw how sensitive they were about that when they brought in every public servant and consultant under the sun to try and retrospectively fill out their $34 million in savings. But in the end it amounted to this, Madam Deputy Speaker: an A4 sheet of paper that was contradicted by virtually every other document that was put into the public arena by the government.
There was an A4 sheet of paper that said: “Here it is. We will save $12 million on rental; $4.6 million in workforce efficiencies; $2 million on churn; office consumables, $0.2 million; IT, $1.1 million; interagency travel costs, $0.4 million; reduction in electricity, water, gas, $2 million; reduced attrition, $0.5 million; $4 million in productivity benefit; $4 million for increased coordination across workgroups also gave a productivity benefit; $2 million on another productivity benefit by better technology utilisation; reduced interagency travel time, $1 million.”
Madam Deputy Speaker, none of this is true. If it were true, they would be going ahead with this project. If any of this analysis stood up to rigour, they would go ahead with it. So this becomes an issue of the government’s credibility. They are going to be going out with all sorts of promises during this election year. During this election year they are going to be saying: “Trust us. We are going to be spending $20 million here or $10 million there and we will build this project.”
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