Page 3409 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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courtesy phone call this morning to say, “It’s not on the blue, but it’s coming on.” If you want people prepared to help you to clean up your mess then you have got to help them be ready for it. I think it is sad that the minister conducts himself in this way.
This is an important matter to the University of Canberra. It is an important matter to the local building industry as well. It is an important matter concerning jobs and it is important to the wellbeing of the ACT. The matter essentially involves providing the University of Canberra with a guarantee of funding of up to $50 million, as a credit facility, for the construction of residential accommodation on land that the University of Canberra already owns.
I am a little surprised about the urgency with which this matter has been brought to the Assembly: we have got to do this now. The reason we have got to do it today—we could probably have done it tomorrow—is that the disallowable instrument will lapse by the election because the minister did not get it in in time. The work was not done. It is a very important matter. We are all lectured about the important things that the government have got to get on with, but they cannot organise their business affairs to get these disallowable instruments, in particular this one, done in time. It is surprising that it is suddenly so urgent when the government have known about it since February.
The question that has occurred to me—and the minister might answer—is this: why was this matter not acted on earlier? I would have thought that the government would have been aware of the funding requirements some time ago. It is not like it is a new funding requirement. Given the action which had been considered, planned and constructed for new residential accommodation for both ANU and UC—in the case of ANU, they have recently completed some—and given the aggregation of the national rental affordability scheme with funds now for the UC, you would have thought the government would have done the work to make sure that this went ahead and not dealt with it in such an ad hoc way.
What it involves is the redevelopment of Cameron wing 5, the stage 1 project on the site of the UC—which is the subject of this disallowance motion—planning for stage 2 on the UC site and the planning for Cameron wing 4. I think it is simply another indication of how our Treasurer is not on top of his portfolio; $50 million worth of potential work is a big project.
Whatever the reason for the delay in bringing this matter to the Assembly—and the Treasurer can answer that when he closes—we are now faced with the absurd situation of the Treasurer moving disallowance on his own disallowance motion, disallowance motion 2012-208, so that it does not lapse. The motion having been moved, the Assembly is now being asked to defeat that motion.
Timing is critical with this matter. If we work backwards, the commonwealth government has provided financial assistance to the states for the provision of residential accommodation for tertiary students under the national rental assistance scheme, or NRAS. In the case of the ACT, a deadline has been specified that certain accommodation has to be available by June 2014. In practice, this means that the accommodation needs to be ready by the beginning of the 2014 academic year. For
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