Page 322 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (12.23): I will close the debate. I note the failure of the Treasurer to get on his feet; maybe it is because he cannot answer that question, maybe because there is no answer that he can reasonably give to that question. Were you telling the truth then or are you telling the truth now? There is only one answer. Only one of those can be true. Either what you were saying then is true—the $34 million you were going to save every year—or it is not.
The fact that Mr Barr is so unable to defend this position shows how deceptive, misleading and dishonest this process has been. They have been dishonest from the start. John Hargreaves—sorry, not John Hargreaves; my apologies. John Hargreaves has no responsibility for this, apart from being a member of the Labor Party. Jon Stanhope certainly was a big fan; he was putting in the false numbers, without a doubt. Those false numbers were picked up by Katy Gallagher. They were picked up and pushed very hard by Katy Gallagher as Chief Minister and as Treasurer. And they have been picked up by Andrew Barr subsequently. None of them were telling the truth. None of them were telling the truth, and that is unacceptable.
I can only imagine that that is the reason why Mr Barr has not bothered to get up—because he cannot defend the indefensible. He has to say either that he was not telling the truth before, that he was perpetuating a major fraud on the people of Canberra with a $34½ million lie, or that they are not telling the truth now. One of those has to be true. That is the credibility problem that they have.
We believe that when you waste millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and are untruthful about it, that is worthy of consideration. When it happens on a project as large as this, which was billed as such a major part of this government’s strategy—the largest proposed spend ever by an ACT government—it is worthy of Assembly consideration. The fact that the Greens will not support it and the Labor Party will not support it again shows what this alliance will do. They will examine everything under the sun if it is about—
Motion (by Mr Smyth) agreed to, with the concurrence of an absolute majority:
That so much of the standing and temporary orders be suspended as would prevent the Assembly concluding its consideration of notice No 2, Assembly business, relating to the proposed reference of the Government Office Building project to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
MR SESELJA: It does again show that the Labor Party and the Greens, the Greens in particular, are no longer interested in scrutiny of the government. They long ago abandoned that pretext. If you will not do it on a fraudulent process like this, if you will not do it on what has been a completely misleading process where millions of dollars have been wasted on such a major project, exactly what will you scrutinise the government on? What will you hold the government to account on? This is an alliance. They do not hold each other to account anymore, because they are in concert. They are in concert in this election year; anything inconvenient for the government will not be looked at by this Assembly, because the Greens do not want to do it and the Labor Party certainly do not want to do it. We will continue to scrutinise. We will take on both members of this alliance regardless.
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