Page 1236 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
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was that you were closing 23 schools and you were planting trees in the middle of a drought. What happens when you plant trees in a drought? They die. And what happened? They died. Now there are even more concerns about the health of the trees, because you got it wrong.
Mr Barr: I apologise to Mr Hanson. Mr Smyth has more positions on the arboretum than he does.
MR SMYTH: No. My position has been consistent. You go back to the original record. I said, “Who plants trees in a drought? Who closed 23 schools to plant trees? And what is your bushfire plan?” You have yet to answer all three of those, but I am entirely consistent. But it is okay.
If Mr Corbell thinks that the jail is a shining example of how they deliver capital works people should be very scared. Remember the opening day! Remember the opening day of the jail when they transferred the first prisoners! There was no security system. That is the sort of jail that Mr Corbell set up that was going to be good for 25 years.
Do we take Simon Corbell’s word on the train or do we take the word of somebody like John Meyer—
Members interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Gentlemen, it is getting late in the day, I know, but please!
MR SMYTH: professor of transport economics, who summarises the argument in these matters very simply when he says, “Buses good. Trains bad.” That is Mr Corbell.
We go to the Chief Minister. I was delighted that the Chief Minister talked of vision. The Chief Minister launched his vision statement, his statement of ambition, last week, except it is not his homework. He is so visionless he had to get Arup and a well-respected gentleman, Dr Tim Williams, to help him put it together. This is his document, yet it is prepared by the ACT government in partnership with Dr Tim Williams and Arup. There we are. The man cannot even do his own homework. What was the opinion after the speech? Let us have that quote from ACTCOSS: it was ageist and they were disappointed with what the Chief Minister had to say.
Then of course we go to “confident, bold and ready”. We have got the shifting sands. We had “confident, bold and ready”. Remember Canberra, “confident, bold and ready”! I looked for Canberra in Dell’s ranking of future-ready cities today. But Canberra is not there as a future-ready city. Apparently we are not ready on the international rankings. Sydney is there. In fact, Sydney is the only Australian city to make Dell’s list in the ranking of future-ready cities.
Other cities like Mexico City got there. Jakarta and Istanbul got there. Sao Paolo got there. Des Moines, Idaho got there. But not Canberra. Obviously poor old Dell have not got the email about “confident, bold and ready” because they do not see that we
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