Page 3061 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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yesterday. Indeed, we could have devoted from 10.30 onwards tomorrow morning to do it, because it is not going to go away. What is said will be said, and it could have been said yesterday. And now we are going to have Ms MacDonald talking—
MR SPEAKER: Mr Stefaniak, come to the motion, please.
MR STEFANIAK: I wonder whether this is just some sort of stunt to bite into private members business and actually not deal with matters which might have some real effect on poverty, such as the bill introduced by the shadow Treasurer today; such as, perhaps, a motion I have got in relation to an inquiry into the hospitals to make them better, which will obviously benefit everyone, including people who suffer poverty.
Ms MacDonald: What a load of rubbish, Bill! Take your hand out of your pocket; it is distracting.
MR STEFANIAK: That is lovely, Karin. Despite everything the Chief Minister has said today in relation to this, which is an attempt at self-congratulation for his government, the fact does remain that there is poverty in our community and the fact does remain that there is poverty, despite the fact that we have full employment—not thanks to you but thanks to a very effective federal government.
Whilst that has helped alleviate a lot of poverty—and a lot of people have been struggling in what is normally the lower end of Australia’s economic society—and whilst a lot of those people have never have had it as good, there are still elements of poverty in our community and obviously there are still things we need to do to address that. That is why the opposition has no problem at all in unanimously supporting the aims of Australian Anti-Poverty Week.
There are a number of things I think this government can do to be a lot more user friendly. Let us look at rents and rates. In terms of rents, we do have very high rents here because, as much as anything else, there is not much of an incentive for people to invest in the ACT, with the tax structure we have. We also have a realisation, which only dawned on the government I think a few months ago, that we do need things like a land act, we do need to be able to ensure we can release land so that there is land coming onto the market, so that there is, in fact, the possibility to drop the cost of housing in the ACT to a more sustainable level. That, obviously, will have an impact too in terms of poverty.
One of the areas, too, which no-one, I think, has really come to grips with effectively in terms of reducing poverty is the impact of family break-up, the impact of problems actually in the home, the impact of the difficulties single people, be they single women or men, have in bringing up children, and the impact of drugs and other substance abuse in terms of families and the great problem that causes and the poverty that causes. That is something that no-one has really completely come to grips with yet, and I think a number of the government’s policies simply ignore that.
There are ways, I think, in which we can perhaps make it a bit easier for people to actually get the necessary assistance, perhaps indeed to take some responsibility too for their own lives, to be given the opportunities to actually do that. Clearly, if that is
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