9 December 2008

The fastest law in the west goes on a splurge

9 December 2008 | johnboy

Treasurer Katy Gallagher has announced a spending spree under the name “The 2008-09 Supplementary Appropriation Bill”.

It’s $16.2 million of extra spending with a recurring impact of $4 million a year. It appears to be the cost of election promises.

Katy’s media release promises the following funding:

— $5.7 million over 2 years to establish new community facilities across Canberra including a new Regional Community Centre at Holt;

— $4.7 million over 4 years for increased accountability and transparency of the Assembly;

— $2.6 million over 4 years for the enhancement of cycling infrastructure around Canberra;

— $2.1 million in direct grants to school parent groups;

— $2.5 million in emergency relief to carers and volunteers to provide assistance in the form of petrol vouchers and bus tickets to alleviate increased transport costs;

— $1 million in emergency relief to charity and welfare groups to assist families in meeting the increased costs of living;

— $100,000 to the RSPCA to assist with a spike in demand for animal welfare services;

— $500,000 over two years in Business and Industrial Relations support for community organisations;

— $500,000 for a Domestic Tourism Marketing Campaign aimed at increasing visitation numbers to Canberra;

— $220,000 to the West Belconnen Health Cooperative; and

— $725,000 over 4 years to implement the Feed-In Tariff.

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Hdopler1:02 pm 10 Dec 08

Felix the Cat said :

I read in Monday’s Canberra Times that ACTION are spending several million (or was it several billion?) dollars on a new ticketing system that will “track” users somehow demographically so ACTION can work out what bus routes and services are needed. Seems like a(nother) waste of money to me, there are a metric shitload of people that will tell ACTION what is needed for nothing. they should spend the millions/billions on some more buses and drivers rather than some fancy-pants ticketing system that is bound to be a failure anyway.

The old system with the 333 inter-city expresses worked well. Each suburb had a route or two that wound it’s way to a town centre, you got a the 333, got off, onto a new bus. I laughed when I first moved back here at the time when the ACT Govt were announcing ‘improvements’ to the time-table, to having buses every 20-30 minutes in peak-time from the suburbs, what a JOKE! they were much more frequent on the system that had the 333, i think it was the early to mid 90’s.

Seriously, who needs to catch a bus from charnwood to lanyon in a single ride? surely they cannot be the majority of commuters? they don’t need to do a study like this, just get lots of buses shuttling people to the town centres with decent frequency and have inter-town express buses. Simple really.

Lenient7:34 am 10 Dec 08

$4.7 million over 4 years for increased accountability and transparency of the Assembly;Does anyone know what that is actually meant to buy us?

One whole lot of blindfolds and a truckload of hush money.

But seriously you can accidently leave a lot of treasury documents lying around for that kind of money.

hoolahawk10:48 pm 09 Dec 08

“$4.7 million over 4 years for increased accountability and transparency of the Assembly”

what shouldn’t they already be doing this…and does it take that much money to implement it?

Vic Bitterman9:22 pm 09 Dec 08

Gotcha… also did some googling. The phrase alone meant nothing to me… but in the context of solar panels and what-not, I agree, it sounds like a good idea.

johnboy8:59 pm 09 Dec 08

Vic Bitterman said :

What’s this feed-in tarrif? Some of youse reckon it sounds OK?

It allows so that if you’re generating more power than you’re using your meter rolls back.

Brilliant way to give people an incentive to actually reduce power usage and invest in home wind and solar.

On the downside how long before someone gets caught tapping into their neighbours’ power?

Felix the Cat8:50 pm 09 Dec 08

I read in Monday’s Canberra Times that ACTION are spending several million (or was it several billion?) dollars on a new ticketing system that will “track” users somehow demographically so ACTION can work out what bus routes and services are needed. Seems like a(nother) waste of money to me, there are a metric shitload of people that will tell ACTION what is needed for nothing. they should spend the millions/billions on some more buses and drivers rather than some fancy-pants ticketing system that is bound to be a failure anyway.

Vic Bitterman8:43 pm 09 Dec 08

What’s this feed-in tarrif? Some of youse reckon it sounds OK?

Hdopler5:51 pm 09 Dec 08

Jim Jones said :

Hdopler said :

– $100,000 to the RSPCA to assist with a spike in demand for animal welfare services;

just give them free chemicals used in the sleep-syringes and be done with it

So, when did they remove your soul?

Nope, soul still intact, just practical: how long do you need to keep an abandoned animal before it becomes economically impractical? i have no idea, but really, if the RSPCA are struggling to in ‘peak’ periods, then they need to look at work-loads etc – hence maybe in peak periods, the time-frame before they put down an animal are decreased, thus saving needless suffering on the animals behalf, and the ACT tax payers 100k, sounds like a win-win to me, and all by employing simple triage principles.

For the record, all our house-hold pets have come from shelters. So Jim, seriously man, just because some-one offers a ‘non-PC’ opinion that differs from yours doesn’t mean we have horns, smell of sulphur and attend KKK meetings!

🙂

Mr Evil5:15 pm 09 Dec 08

Does the $100 000 for the RSPCA only apply to working animal families? 🙂

trevar4:40 pm 09 Dec 08

I love it! Finally a government department with the acronym DECCEW! So now, when we get hit over the head by that department, we’ll know that they’re just living up to their name: deck you!

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