Page 1103 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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government, the most radical government in Australia, is long on words, long on speeches—we had the whole cacophony speak to us this morning—but it does not deliver.
You have only got to go back to the Auditor-General’s reports on the delivery of infrastructure to know that that is the truth. And you have only got to go to yesterday’s MPI on the delivery of infrastructure. We have got the GDE, the Cotter Dam, the prison, Tharwa bridge and emergency services headquarters at the airport. You do not deliver. We see a quarter of a billion dollars—a quarter of a billion dollars—being pushed back out of this year’s budget because you cannot deliver. Use as many words as you want, transform yourselves as often as you want, twist and change as many times as you want—it does not work away from the truth, and the truth is that this is a government that does not deliver.
Let me just focus on something that Mr Barr said. Mr Barr said, “We are here; we are a government supporting business investment.” When you invest in something, you normally reach for the prospectus. If you reach for the ACT business investment prospectus, you would go back to a document that was written in 2010. There was no prospectus done in 2012-13. There was no prospectus for 2011-12. They did one in 2010-11. They did not do a prospectus in 2009-10. They did one back in 2008-09, but of course prospectuses change. And if you are an investor, the information changes, and the detail and the conditions change. If you are coming to the ACT government and you want a copy of their prospectus on investing in the ACT, you will find that it is three years old. And that is a man who says he is proud about their encouraging investment in the ACT!
Then we talked about density. They said, “We have got all these policies. We are increasing density. We have spoken to people. Not only have we moved to increase density; we thought that was such a good idea we put a tax on it.” Yes, the lease variation tax that attacks density—that works against density. Mr Barr got it right when he said that every tax has a drag, has an effect. In relation to the lease variation tax, you can see that, in the last six quarters of the existence of this tax, not once has it reached its objective. The government in this financial year is now writing down the amount it expects to get from the lease variation tax, because it is just not delivering.
The problem here is that they can transform as often as they want, and sprinkle their speeches with words to make themselves feel good, but they are just glib words. There is no inspiration in these words. The reality of it is that a nerve has been hit. We have got the standard raw nerve response motion, because this is a crowd that does not deliver.
Let us go to another piece of the motion. Let us go to economic development. For years I have been asking that the government work to diversify the ACT economy. I now see that the words “diverse” and “diversification” actually appear in their motion. They have finally discovered economic diversification.
Mr Hanson: They have been transformed.
MR SMYTH: They have been transformed. But are we seeing the economy being transformed? I think not. You can see that, after 11 years of Labor in office, the 60 per
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