Page 538 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 5 March 2008
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MR SMYTH: Aboriginal kids in Queensland and Northern Territory is okay, all you are is a joke and you will be known as the chief cheerleader for the Rudd government.
Let us go through the amendment as moved by Mr Stanhope. The first paragraph “notes the actions already taken and the announced intentions of the Commonwealth Government to address as a top priority the threats presented to the national and regional economies”. Well, what about the wasted years of the Stanhope government and their lack of anything done to diversify the ACT economy? We have a Chief Minister who has lamented and moaned about his narrow economic base. What have you done about it? You are the Chief Minister, you have had a billion-dollar boom, you have more money than any other Chief Minister has ever had in the history of this place—and you have done nothing to secure the ACT’s economic future.
Then we go to paragraph 2 (c): “the ACT Government’s increased focus on housing affordability to assist in meeting pressures on those seeking to enter the ACT housing market and stay in it”. I just simply go back to the “squeeze them until they bleed but not till they die” comment. The government is outed well and truly by the state report on housing affordability from the UDIA, which says that, while the government are making adjustments, one, their processes are too long and convoluted and, two, they have squeezed the land supply. They say:
The challenge for the Australian Capital Territory Government is to improve affordability for those entering the market without causing a price collapse in the wider market. Improving land supply and assessment processes and permitting changes to the mix and size of products that can be offered are all part of the steps that need to be taken.
And, yes, Mr Corbell’s strategy has been totally discredited and the government is now scrabbling around to try to make up lost ground.
We should go to what the Chief Minister had to say. The substantive motion has a focus on the adverse impacts of decisions that have been made by and are in prospect from the Rudd government and it seeks the response of the Stanhope government to these cuts. Unfortunately, the motion has essentially been hijacked by the government through the amendment of the Chief Minister. Following that hijacking, the Chief Minister went on an extensive rant this morning about all sorts of things that may not even be pertinent. This is of course the way of the Chief Minister—and then he abandons the chamber, as he so often does, because he likes to dish it out but he simply cannot take it.
The Chief Minister spent considerable time talking about 12 increases in what he called the official interest rate, and it is time for a short lesson in economics for the Chief Minister.
Mr Barr: From you! You are the biggest ignoramus in the Assembly.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!
MR SMYTH: And, by the way, there is an error in the amendment; it should be “official”, not “officials”. It is worth reminding the Chief Minister that what the
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