Page 504 - Week 02 - Thursday, 11 February 2021
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You have monetary policy from the Reserve Bank having to go full tilt, as hard as it has ever gone in the history of this country, against the fiscal policy settings of the commonwealth government. You have the head of the Reserve Bank and the commonwealth Treasurer with diametrically opposed economic policies, so it is no wonder that we have not seen real wage growth in this country for some time.
This is the issue—incomes. We have got to get incomes rising, more people in jobs, the minimum wage lifted, and wage growth in this country. That will get people out of poverty. And for those who cannot find work even in a recovering economy we simply must raise the rate.
From the ACT government’s perspective just looking at the data, in terms of who we assist through our concessions program—the details are in the budget papers for those who would like to delve into them—15,000 households are assisted through the pensioner concession schemes, and about 31,000 households are assisted through both utility rebates and other ACT government concessions that were increased by hundreds of dollars during the pandemic.
Those increases,, combined with the increases in social security payments have had the single biggest lifting of people out of poverty in the last five decades. It is those two measures combined—income assistance from the commonwealth, and more of it, and a greater level of concessions from the territory government.
This builds on the ACT government’s work, and I draw the Leader of the Opposition’s attention to the 2012 targeted assistance strategy and the 2015 ACT government concessions review. In the last eight years—or nine now, as we are into 2021—we have undertaken two further reviews, and the government will consider further policy initiatives in coming budgets.
As I indicated on budget day, we will be continuing COVID income supports and concessions through calendar year 2021 and will make further decisions in relation to concessions for those in receipt of commonwealth statutory income support payments—so around 31,000 households, the 39,000 people that Ms Lee refers to—in our August budget.
I would like to see our efforts supported by a decision nationally to permanently raise the rate. I would also like to see a commitment from the federal government to align their fiscal policy with the bold but absolutely spot-on objectives of the Reserve Bank Governor—to focus on job creation and a return to full employment as the absolute, number one objective of economic policy in this country. It is our number one policy objective. As Ms Lee indicated, we have the lowest unemployment rate in Australia, but I want to get that rate back down to where it was pre-COVID—so it will have a two in front of it, not a three. And I want to see more than 250,000 jobs in the territory economy by 2025.
They are the economic policy objectives we will be pursuing, and we will do so by implementing the policies that we took to the 2020 election. The government will not be supporting Ms Lee’s motion today.
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