Page 2821 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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something here and said that it would be wonderful if it could be addressed. That is, the poor number of visitors to the Nolan Gallery.
I understand that the wishes of his widow are being respected in terms of the location, but I recall in estimates being amazed—they are not in the budget papers, so they may have been presented there or just presented orally—at the differential in the attendances even at Lanyon, which I am a bit of fan of. There are not many examples of 19th century architecture in this territory versus the Nolan Gallery.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.23—Gambling and Racing Commission, $4,008,000 (net cost of outputs), totalling $4,008,000—agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—total appropriations to departments, $1,840,542,000 (net cost of outputs), $486,600,000 (capital injection) and $377,408,000 (payments on behalf of the Territory), totalling $2,704,550,000.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (4.33 am): In conclusion, Mr Speaker—I repeat that I am conscious that we are meeting here at an extraordinarily late hour; it is now 25 to five in the morning—it has to be said that this has been the worst budget that the people have had imposed on them in the territory’s history. There will be a lot of damage done to ordinary Canberrans. I believe the government has not really demonstrated sympathy or appreciation in any of the debate we have heard to date about how this will hurt ordinary families, how it will hurt people on fixed incomes or how it will hurt people such as superannuants. What is not appreciated here, especially with the reliance on property incomes, is that there are quite a number of people in the city who may in theory become wealthier because of the appreciation of land values, but in fact their cash position is not dramatically changing. So they become asset rich but to some extent cash poor. When you start accelerating their costs at a rate that is well in excess of inflation and well in excess of their capacity to generate additional income if they are having CPI adjustments in their income or whatever, you will lead to a deal of distress.
I am sure that if Mr Quinlan were here he would be leaping up to say, “They can attach the debt to their property.” But anyone who has dealt with our senior citizens and taken an interest in their needs would know that older people do not like to leave a trail of debt for their children and it does distress older people when they are not in a position to meet the outlays that they are required to meet under statutory arrangements. I have, quite honestly, had people call my office who have been seriously distressed as they have worked out what they believe they are going to have to pay. And even another subgroup who do not even own property are also going to feel the impact of many of these increases.
This wage price indexation concept is the work of a clever number-cruncher somewhere within the government who has just simply said, “We can bring in more money,” but it is completely insensitive to the position of ordinary working people in this territory. It is insensitive to the battlers we have out there in our community. I have spoken about high levels of income. I had the privilege recently—I have not said it publicly and I am not doing it for any public value—to go out with St Vincent de Paul on their night patrol. They said that no MLA has done that before. I urge other members to volunteer. It was
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