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2344 Appropriation (Parliament) Bill; Appropriation Bill 31 Oct 2012 circumstance the Minister for Local Government did. Unfortunately, this is another thing that the Premier is in complete denial about—he just cannot believe that Country has beaten City. To the Minister for Local Government, I congratulate you on your ball-handling skills. Hon. SA EMERSON (Indooroopilly—LNP) (Minister for Transport and Main Roads) (11.55 pm): I rise to make a contribution to the estimates committee report of the Transport, Housing and Local Government Committee. Before I do so and in response to those comments about that touch football game, I do note that the member for Mulgrave was on the Country side. I do concede—begrudgingly— that Country did win and therefore for the only time this year the member for Mulgrave had a win. I thank not only all members of the committee but also the committee chair for his fine efforts on the day. The estimates committee looked at this budget and, as I said on the day, this budget has been formed within the context of very challenging fiscal circumstances. However, significant achievements for Queensland are contained in that budget, for example, on roads and QTRIP. Here we saw a program that finally brought some honesty to this process, because the reality is that under the previous government we saw a con job on Queenslanders—projects that were promised that the previous government knew it had no dollars for, no money for, nothing on lay-by for. In fact, it promised things knowing that it did not have one dollar to deliver some of those programs. It promised more than $300 million worth of programs as opposed to this document—a document that is an honest record of what can be achieved with dollars that are there. With regard to the Bruce Highway, it is significant of course that throughout the time of that hearing I received not one question on the Bruce Highway from the shadow minister for main roads— not one question. That is significant because we know that the Labor Party has walked away from the Bruce Highway. In fact, what he heard tonight was weasel words from the shadow minister for main roads, who now claims that the report in the Cairns Post was wrong and that he was being paraphrased. Paraphrasing basically means that they are telling him what he said, and that is the reality. What he said in that document was that state money being spent on the Bruce Highway was misspending of state money. What a disgraceful situation, because this budget put the Bruce Highway front and centre and contained details of $200 million over the next four years as the first down payment on our promise of $1 billion over the next decade on the basis that the federal government will match that 80-20, because we are committed to the Bruce Highway. Why? Because the RACQ has been very clear that we need to spend money on the Bruce Highway to avoid 300 to 400 deaths over those years. Mr Dempsey: Did he ask a question on it? Did he ask a question? Mr EMERSON: No, not one question was asked about the Bruce Highway by the member for Mulgrave. That is the reality. Not one question was asked by him during that process. Mr PITT: I rise to a point of order. Mr Deputy Speaker, he may not be saying the words but I believe that the minister is reflecting on the fact that I was not in the hearing at that time. There is a longstanding tradition that you do not refer to a member’s absence from this chamber nor in the estimates process. I ask him to withdraw that comment. I was on legitimate business in India. It is pretty hard to be in the chamber when you are in India. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Berry): Order! Honourable minister, I am not asking you to withdraw it. Mr EMERSON: Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you. There is a record budget of $1.6 billion for public transport. It was extraordinary to see the member for South Brisbane try to manipulate the numbers, because the reality was that, under the previous government they changed the rules. They changed the methodology to try to make their numbers look better but the reality was that, under Labor, the annual reports showed year after year after year after year patronage of public transport falling. It has been only in the last quarter, with LNP policies on public transport, that we have seen a rise in patronage occur. Under Labor, it was an appalling situation. Queensland was possibly the only state in Australia to see public transport patronage fall. Then we saw the omission. There is no way it can be ignored that clearly the shadow minister for transport had not bothered to read the TransLink annual report. She asked why we had not published the patronage figures for Q4. The reality was that not only had we published them but also they had been tabled in parliament. We had to point out to the shadow minister for transport that they had been tabled in parliament—page 65 of the document. We have a lazy shadow transport minister who does not even have her own questions to ask; she relies only on repeating tweets off the social networking service. Hon. BS FLEGG (Moggill—LNP) (Minister for Housing and Public Works) (12.01 am): I am delighted to make my contribution to the report of the committee. I will begin by giving my thanks and congratulations to the member for Warrego, who chaired the committee very even-handedly and very skilfully, which contributed to the performance of the committee. I would also like to thank the members, the research officers and the parliamentary staff. In particular, I would like to thank the members of my own office, my director-general and my departmental staff, who put a lot of time and effort into preparing for this estimates committee hearing.
31 Oct 2012 Appropriation (Parliament) Bill; Appropriation Bill 2345 As the minister for transport said, you have to look at this budget from the point of view of the fiscal background in which it was delivered. This budget was delivered in an environment of fiscal crisis, of $65 billion worth of debt and rapidly escalating. It is a budget that, despite the measures that those opposite want to criticise, still required the borrowing of a further $10 billion in order to allow the government to meet its obligations. This situation is compounded when you look at the appalling state in which the previous Labor government left almost every part of my department. Today, we heard the members opposite talk about QBuild. The reality is that they wanted to prop up QBuild by telling every P&C in Queensland that they had no choice but to use QBuild, that they could not obtain the best value for money that they could obtain. That is no way to go about propping up a business. To the astonishment of people who have been in this House for a while, QBuild, which is responsible for public buildings, was not the holder of an A-class licence for asbestos removal, which is one of the core issues in building maintenance in our schools, public buildings and public houses. This department had been run into the ground by those opposite and we have followed them around with a bucket and a shovel cleaning up the mess. We have heard those opposite speak about matters relating to public housing. The state in which they left public housing was nothing short of shameful. They left us with thousands of underoccupied homes while tens of thousands of families in Queensland could not get any help at all from those opposite or the miserable failures of ministers who they put in this portfolio. They operated the housing portfolio so poorly that it lost money and when houses became vacant they sold them and put the money into a general pool that paid for maintenance and administration. Why? Because they were too lazy, too incompetent and too stupid not to run this portfolio at a loss. Those opposite have screamed abuse at me since day one, but I am the first minister who has actually given public housing tenants respect by asking them what they think. We offered them an amnesty and thousands of people came forward and said, ‘We are housing people in public housing rent free that you do not know about.’ Those opposite ran public housing without even doing anything about this. So is it any wonder that nearly 30,000 families were refused help by those opposite. We have put in place a very active and comprehensive reform program in public housing. We are addressing the fact that the public housing portfolio is financially not viable under the policies that those opposite left us with. We are beginning the very important task of redeveloping the public housing portfolio. The member for Springwood is playing a particularly active role in helping me do that. The one thing that those opposite will not mention in relation to housing is anything about the nearly 30,000 families who they refused to help. Those families would have had no help if that government had had a chance to continue. Hon. DF CRISAFULLI (Mundingburra—LNP) (Minister for Local Government) (12.06 am): Can I start by also adding my thanks to the chairman, the member for Warrego. As a young councillor, he was always there at those conferences. He did not just rush in and rush out; he was there to give his time. He has been a great mentor for me over the years. Indeed, I thank all of his committee and the great interest that they showed in what is an important process of the budget for 2012-13. I also thank my departmental staff, my own ministerial staff and, indeed, the staff of the parliament for their efforts. I thought I would start by picking up some of the points of the debate. First of all, I thank those on the government side for their comments to the three ministers. It means a great deal to us. I thank them very much. To those opposite, I would love to start by critiquing the contribution of the member for South Brisbane but, as she again failed to discuss local government, that would be difficult. All I got from the member for Bundamba was Marco Polo. That leads me to the member for Mulgrave. The member for Mulgrave continues this line about the Brisbane City Council and comparing the debt of the Brisbane City Council to the disastrous situation that this government inherited. At a time when we have councils under genuine financial stress because of what has been put on them, the powers that have been stripped from them and the responsibilities that have been thrust on them, I find it intriguing that the sole interest of the member for Mulgrave is one of the few councils that is, in fact, rated strong. To put it in perspective—and I will use rough numbers—on a ratio of debt per person, Brisbane ratepayers have about $1,800 per person and the state government has about $16,000 per person. So I use those figures to provide a genuine contrast. I turn now to the budget for the portfolio of Local Government. Although the questioning from the member for Mackay did not really go down this path, I would like to take the opportunity to do it myself and discuss something that will happen in this year’s local government budget and that is that the money available for councils under the Local Government Grants and Subsidies Program will go from $8 million to $63 million. Members might be wondering how on earth this occurs. I can tell members how. Last year in a budget approval of $45 million, local government was only able to spend $8 million. I can tell members why.
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