Page 1080 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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hospital in Bruce. We support that. I asked some questions about that in annual reports hearings on Friday. The government will not tell us when they are going to build it; they will not tell us how much it is going to cost. Where is the information? Where is the detail? The government are refusing to tell us. This has been on the table now for a number of years; again, we have seen very little information. What we are seeing is more evidence of the health infrastructure program in chaos; they simply do not know what they are doing.
As the minister said yesterday in answers to questions—have they got the money? They are looking at the amount of capital that they have got available, what they can afford. We know that they want to spend their money on their progressive policies like light rail. Does that leave enough money for things like tower blocks at the Canberra Hospital or the University of Canberra hospital? We will keep an eye on that.
Moving to school education, the motion says “implement a needs-based funding approach to school”. The only evidence we have seen on that from this government is their support for the Gonski review, but that showed both ACT government schools and non-government schools losing funding. We do not support any loss of funding. Does this government? They have not made that clear. Are they going to be following Gonski to the letter? That results in schools losing funding. Are they going to make their position on that clear? It is very clear from this side that we do not support that. We need to see some modelling from this government on what the implications of Gonski would be in this jurisdiction, but to date we have not seen that.
The next issue in the motion is regional service. We had some debate about this. The Chief Minister set up a committee. You might remember that in the last sitting week the Chief Minister came up with her vision of regional engagement and we were able to point to the fact that 16 years ago, under Kate Carnell and the Canberra Liberals, this was actually all occurring. There were forums; there was regional engagement. There was significant work done in our region, with 17 mayors engaged. There were responses to productivity commissions. There was a whole bunch of work that was being done.
What did the Labor Party do? They got into government and scrapped it all. They scrapped it all. For 12 years they have done nothing. Now, Katy Gallagher, scrapping around for a vision, as we realised, up in her office, goes, “Right; this is what I am going to do. I am going to come up with regional development.” It is Katy Gallagher Kate Carnell lite. She said, “I am going to come up with some good ideas.” The problem is that she looked around at the blank faces of her caucus and did not come up with any. So she said, “Let’s refer this to a committee.” They have done that and we will see what that committee comes up with. I look forward to it. Let us hope that what that committee does come up with is some of the good ideas that would have been implemented in this jurisdiction before Labor came in and wrecked the whole thing.
On transport, the motion refers to implementing the capital metro project for the first stage of light rail. What we know from the Greens’ policy—this mob will do anything to implement Greens policy, to keep Shane Rattenbury on the frontbench and Chris Bourke on the backbench—is that this is just the first tranche, $600 million plus.
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