Page 2204 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2016
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under your ministership, Mr Barr, when you were education minister our schools become overcrowded to the point where we saw an autistic child locked in a cage. Other schools are bursting at the seams because of a lack of investment because this Chief Minister when he was education minister cut 23 schools.
Where are your priorities? I will tell you where they are—they are on a tram. It is every single available dollar on a tram. That is not our priority. Our priority is to restore funding for police, to make sure we have money for education and health, and to make sure we are not tripling your rates, putting up parking fees in Civic and things like that. Remember that—Mr Barr’s concerns for low-paid workers? I remember when Mr Barr put paid parking in Civic till 10.30 at night. We asked questions. I think it was Ms Lawder who asked questions about what this means for low-paid hospitality and retail workers. What was Mr Barr’s response? It is the difference between sparkling and still water when you are having a $100 dinner in Civic. Remember Marie Antoinette? That was the let-them-have-cake moment from Andrew Barr. Outrageous!
The government comes in here and skites about their budget. One thing Mr Barr is good at—I will give him that—is promising surpluses. But as Dr Khalid Ahmed, a former director in Treasury, said in the Canberra Times last week, the return to surplus in 2018-19 was even more miraculous and unbelievable than this year’s figure. That is not the Canberra Liberals saying that; that is a former Treasury director saying that it is unsustainable and is not believable.
With some of the critique we have heard from the government on our policies on building better roads and bus systems and education and so on, it is ironic that they have copied so many of them: the duplication of Cotter Road, a number of road improvements that we have talked about in Gungahlin, some of the bus improvements Mr Coe has outlined with more direct routes. It is funny that they railed against it and said, “Oh, this is terrible from the Liberals,” and then they copied it.
It reminds me of this critique about Mr Smyth. Andrew Barr and those opposite spent the last decade bemoaning Mr Smyth. They criticised him, “He’s just another Liberal. Got no credibility.” They spent 10 years saying that. If that were the case, why has Mr Barr just appointed Mr Smyth to work for him?
We know they like our policies because they copy them. We know they like the fact that we have better members on our side because they pay very good money for them. Mr Barr has just paid $300,000 a year to employ Mr Smyth. So if our economic policies are such a problem, if he does not like what we have been saying for so long about rates and about lease variation charge and about the tram—eloquent points that Mr Smyth has been making in this place for a decade—why did he employ him? If the opposition is so wrong, if he does not like what we are saying, then why did Mr Barr see the need to recruit a Liberal?
I appreciate the fact you have a problem; not only have you got a budget deficit but you have got a talent deficit on your side. I understand that, but I do not know that you needed to come to the Canberra Liberals to try to rectify your talent deficit after poor old Mr Corbell was cut by the CFMEU. Anyway, I digress.
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