9 December 2008

The fastest law in the west goes on a splurge

| johnboy
Join the conversation
27

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:

    — $9.7 million over 4 years to establish the new Department of the Environment, Climate Change, Energy and Water (DECCEW);

    — $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.

Join the conversation

27
All Comments
  • All Comments
  • Website Comments
LatestOldest

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.

$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.

“$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.

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?

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!

🙂

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

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!

Hdopler said :

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

Waste of money, what will they do with the grant money? publish more papers saying that marking kids papers with red pens gives them low self-esteem? pft

– $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;

waste of money, when you volunteer you assume the costs

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

waste of money

– $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?

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

Hopefully that means fixing up some of the bicycle paths rather than putting bike lanes onto the roads.

Who ever thought of putting bike lanes onto roads was a moron.

And after this mornings fkn drive to work on athlon drive… (salut to the retard in the green car that rear ended someone at the round about) how about breaking off some change to duplicate athlon drive all the way from tuggers to woden – immediately

4.7 million to do what you should be doing anyway, and only 100,000 to the RSPCA?

Screw you, Katy.

Let’s see:

$9.7 million over 4 years to establish the new Department of the Environment, Climate Change, Energy and Water (DECCEW);

Waste of money, replication of Federal and NSW departments

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

Could be useful, depending on what is developed and who runs it

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

Good investment *IF* it actually works (cough cough)

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

Good investment

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

Waste of money, what will they do with the grant money? publish more papers saying that marking kids papers with red pens gives them low self-esteem? pft

– $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;

waste of money, when you volunteer you assume the costs

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

waste of money

– $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

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

replication of federal red tape, waste of money

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

where are they advertising? wasted if they spend a dollar of it in sydney

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

good investment

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

good investment

overall 6/10, some good bits, some bloody stupid bits

Gungahlin Al2:38 pm 09 Dec 08

Oh and that sigh you just heard was the Capital’s collective media breathing a great big sigh that the Assembly is finally back in action and they will have something to report on at last.

Gungahlin Al2:35 pm 09 Dec 08

Simon has been quick out of the blocks with his new climate change portfolio. (No doubt prodded along by the need to out-green the Greens…)

Perhaps he’s found his native habitat in this subject.

Bringing forward the Feed-in Tariff is good. And bringing the entire environment suite into the one holistic department makes good sense. The increasing splitting of climate change and water out of environment portfolios in recent times (local and federal) is a political nonsense.

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

They just announced A-SPAN will be coming online next year and the ACT LA will be hooked up to that system in the near term

Live unedited streaming of every session of the LA

How more transparent can it get? waste of fkn money

Post your transcripts online and record the live feeds for historical purpose. Make all reports available to the public.. you dont need $4,700,000 to do that

So remind me again why we didn’t have a measly coupla hundred thousand to keep the much missed Griffith Library open?

PS – there was supposed to be a feasability study first for the Holt facility (not done yet), and I can’t find the review on treasury’s website yet. (happy to be corrected)

Maybe they need the $4.7 million to be able to actually make public the reports the issue their press reelases on.

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

Is this in addition to the $29 million for the refurb of closed schools, which includes approximately $5 million for the refurb community facility at the Holt Primary School (that sounded just like this regional community centre)?

There’s some serious double counting somewhere.

it varies from weeks to months.

which means unless there’s a passing camera crew recording there’s no public record of their very expensive debates while the debate is still relevant.

johnboy said :

I thought that too.

On the other hand getting the sodding hansard online the next day would be very nice, massively improve accountability, and could well cost a bit.

How long does Hansard take at the moment?

$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?

Cameron said :

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

Erm, how about just being more open and accountable for free?

Honesty is the best policy, at the right price!

I thought that too.

On the other hand getting the sodding hansard online the next day would be very nice, massively improve accountability, and could well cost a bit.

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

Erm, how about just being more open and accountable for free?

Daily Digest

Want the best Canberra news delivered daily? Every day we package the most popular Riotact stories and send them straight to your inbox. Sign-up now for trusted local news that will never be behind a paywall.

By submitting your email address you are agreeing to Region Group's terms and conditions and privacy policy.