Page 3082 - Week 09 - Thursday, 13 October 2022
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scouting groups—everyone who is on board with the Greens nationally on this issue—in saying that that is a way to solve this wicked problem.
Just yesterday we saw a very disappointing announcement from the federal finance minister, Katy Gallagher, that the federal Albanese Labor government will ignore the requests of this Assembly—all 25 members and all three parties—to waive the ACT’s historic housing debt. That is in spite of the ACT government’s commitment, through Chief Minister Barr, to ensure that all of that money would be redirected, dollar for dollar, back into the construction—
Ms Lee: All three parties.
MR DAVIS: Ms Lee, if you do not mind, I will continue my remarks—
Ms Lee: I am egging you on. I am saying it is all three parties. That is right—exactly.
MR DAVIS: You will have to forgive me, Ms Lee, because, through you, Madam Speaker, given the opposition’s willingness to bring this motion back either as a rehashed version of a failed election policy or as a copy-and-paste federal Greens election policy, it shows that there is no great appetite amongst the conservative side of Australian politics to deal with the structural issues that impact on wealth and income inequality and poverty. It is a natural consequence of the economic model supported by the Canberra Liberals, the federal Liberals and Liberals everywhere—the trickle-down neoliberal con—that creates poverty.
The Liberals here—this is not personal; this is political; this is pure ideology; this is what this political party stands for: wealth, enterprise, opportunity. And good for them. But the natural consequence of the lack of regulation on the capitalist system, which has got away from us, is increased rises in poverty. It serves Ms Lee’s political purpose to pretend that it is all the fault of Chief Minister Barr, ACT Labor and the Greens. We see Mr Parton in here regularly giving my colleagues a hard time—everybody does not have a home yet, and therefore we are liars.
I want to pick up on a point that Minister Vassarotti made most articulately today while she was under attack from the opposition; that is, I would hope every member of this Assembly—all 25 of us, all three parties—aspired to all Canberrans having a home. I think it is very telling that only the ACT Greens went to the last election saying that everyone should have a home in Canberra, as if that was radical. If that is a radical policy, call me radical. I am proud to wear that badge of honour if it is radical to say everyone deserves enough money to live, everyone deserves a roof over their head, and everybody deserves supports when they are down.
I want to take particular issue, though, with the Leader of the Opposition’s questionable and politicised selective quoting of the ACTCOSS report. I would like to quote at least three paragraphs of the ACTCOSS report, Madam Speaker, if you will forgive me. I am not going to selectively quote for political purposes; I am going to give you what ACTCOSS have actually said is a driving force of poverty—
Ms Lee: The whole report—are you? You are going to quote the whole report?
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