Page 150 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 11 February 2015
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he is doing. And it is that sort of approach that people hate about politicians: when you accuse the other side of doing something or of going to do something that you are currently doing—and you do yourself no service, Chief Minister, by running that line.
Then he mentioned tourism. Let us look at tourism. Some of the latest stats I have seen show overnight trips to the ACT, domestic overnight visitations and average spend for a night, declined when in just about every other jurisdiction in the country they went up. Why is that? We had the boost of the centenary, but we have got a government that failed to deliver long and lasting benefits from that.
We have had to reboot CBR. A year later it has been rebooted. One would ask the question: why? Obviously it was not working. Maybe you make the case that you are just refining it so that it works better, but it would be great for the tourism minister, Treasurer and Chief Minister to table some documents on some actual hard data on whether or not CBR has been successful.
This is an important motion because at the end it affects people, where they live and how they work, their cost of living, their wellbeing, and business confidence when people want some leadership. One of the Labor members one day will stand up and shock us all by saying, “Yes, Kevin Rudd cut more than 14,000 jobs from the federal public service and that had an impact on the ACT.” We stand here and say, “We do not like what the coalition is doing in regard to job numbers.” But we are honest in that review. We also stood in this place and decried what the Rudd Labor government was doing, but none of those opposite had the courage to stand up for their electorate. Getting a lecture from the likes of those opposite about job cuts is a bit rich when they just went quietly into the night when the Kevin and Julia show was cutting jobs in the ACT and at the same time not giving the sort of supporting infrastructure that, for instance, the Howard government did through the building of highways, additions at the airport, museums, monuments, memorials—those sorts of things.
This is an important motion. It should not be amended, because if we amend it it means that we are supporting the same old, same old—same old Treasurer, same old story, same old Chief Minister, glib words, glib lines. “Transformational” lasted a year. We are now into “renew”. Let us have a genuine debate about real renewal for the ACT and where it might go, not just have our heads in the sand from a government that is tired and a government that really does not have an agenda. Everything they drop on the table, like city to the lake, is now not a priority—unless the Chief Minister has now put city to the lake back on the agenda as a priority.
They do glossies like Mr Corbell did in 2005 for the development of Civic that had 16 major initiatives, none of which occurred. They are good at the glossies, but they are not good at the delivery. We have got Auditor-General’s reports that say they are not good at the delivery of capital works. This motion should stand as it is.
Question put:
That the amendment be agreed to.
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