Page 3527 - Week 09 - Thursday, 23 August 2018
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expenditure. Anything that remains beyond that can be dealt with through either a further appropriation or the Treasurer’s advance.
Given that there will be an opportunity for a further appropriation in this fiscal year associated with the mid-year review, should there be a need to provide any additional resource to the executive budget that would be the time and place in which it would occur. But I note that funding transfers from the Office of the Legislative Assembly to the executive budget.
More broadly, the government will remain focused through this period of massive political instability in our nation without a functioning Australian government today, with multiple candidates for the Prime Ministership of this nation, and another sitting Prime Minister politically assassinated in office by their own party. The Labor side of politics has experience; we have lived through this ourselves and we know how debilitating that is for not only the political party but the good governance of this nation.
Members of the executive here have worked very hard over the past six months with their federal ministerial colleagues, and I speak particularly of Minister Rattenbury and the work around the national energy guarantee that has just been trashed by dinosaur conservative coal lovers. People prepared to go into the Australian parliament bearing lumps of coal saying, “This is our future,” are now the moderate contenders for the leadership of our nation. Scott Morrison is now the moderate candidate to lead the Liberal Party. It is Scott Morrison up against Peter Dutton for who will lead this shambles of an Australian government.
What we need now is an election federally. Whoever ends up as Prime Minister at the end of this day should immediately call a federal election. Why? Because the Council of Australian Governments requires there to be a functioning Australian government. In many areas of joint responsibility between the executive of the Australian Capital Territory and the executive of the Australian government we need a way forward. Whether that is in energy policy, health, schools funding, housing and homelessness, or any of these areas where there is joint responsibility, a functioning Australian government is necessary to deliver services in this community.
We have a functioning executive in the Australian Capital Territory, and for Mrs Dunne to come in here and lecture us about how to run a government on a day when the Liberal Party is imploding across this nation is extraordinary.
Mrs Dunne: It is not imploding here, so just be careful.
MR BARR: No, the right wing have already taken over. The Canberra Liberals are a wholly owned subsidiary of the far right. That is already done and dusted. That happened when Zed Seselja beat Garry Humphries—your mentor, Mrs Dunne—when the moderates were swept aside and when the response to losing the 2016 election was to go even further to the right by installing Alistair Coe as your leader. You are the A to Z of conservatism in this city. You are proud of it because that is where you stand in the Liberal Party.
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