Page 2585 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 2013
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Melbourne, and Peter Newman from Perth. There are others that I could list but in the time I have available I also note the international experts we have met over time and the interest groups, the Australasian Railway Association and the Bus Industry Confederation.
I must say that the idea there are not enough studies being done and not enough analysis being done in order to make a decision about mode choice is clearly ridiculous. And it certainly compares well when you contrast it to the effort of the Liberals when they promised hundreds of millions of dollars for car parks and road expansions at the last election. I would love to see the documentation they relied on when making some of their election promises. There were no feasibility studies or costings done on those promises.
The ACT Liberals’ road duplication promises could not be costed because the Liberals provided no detail. Of the Liberals’ road promises, Treasury said:
Treasury notes no specific projects have been identified, and as such, Treasury is unable to confirm the reasonableness of capital costs to deliver particular projects.
There are other examples I could cite, but I think that this demonstrates both the depth of work that has been done and the available documents that the Liberals might like to consider.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.45): I would like firstly to thank Mr Smyth for bringing this motion before the Assembly today. It is an important motion. The Canberra Liberals believe very strongly that this is a bad budget for the reasons that Mr Smyth has laid down and that we should not be debating this next week. I would like to take this opportunity to commend Mr Smyth for his contribution throughout this budget debate. I think he has articulated the Liberal Party position extremely well. His insights and his experience on the estimates committee were of great value to me as the chair. He certainly has the respect of his colleagues and of the community at large.
Before I go to the substance of the issue, what we just heard from Mr Rattenbury was what we hear from Mr Rattenbury all the time, which is essentially a defence of the government. It is increasingly apparent that it is a nonsense that we have a cabinet minister who stands up and on every occasion simply pats the government on the back and uses the opportunity to give the Liberal Party a kick. It seems that on every piece of legislation, on every motion and on every portfolio, Mr Rattenbury basically stands up and says how wonderful the government is, and kicks the Liberals.
To be honest, I am pretty sick of it. I am not sure what purpose it serves in this Assembly. I am not sure what benefit it is providing to good governance or to the democratic process to have a cabinet minister who can, at will, speak on whatever portfolio he wants to try and create this illusion. The Greens did this a little bit in the last Assembly as well. Meredith Hunter or Shane Rattenbury would stand up and say, “We’ve considered it and, yes, the government’s wonderful and the Liberals are bad.” That was the sort of narrative that we heard constantly from Mr Rattenbury.
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