Page 618 - Week 02 - Thursday, 6 March 2008
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People are drawing in the barriers. They are looking to their mortgage. They are looking to their family security. They are not investing because of your party and its economic mismanagement—its fiscal desecration: eight interest rate rises since August 2005, an additional $4,400 on a mortgage for young Canberra families, people you care nothing about.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR STANHOPE: You care nothing about young Canberra families. You are a young Canberra family previously investing outside your home and your mortgage and you have a government that allows your mortgage to grow by $4,400 a year! There is your answer, Mr Smyth. Look to yourself. There is your answer, Mr Smyth. The answer is: you and your party not caring about the implications of economic mismanagement on young families. There is your answer. (Time expired.)
MR SMYTH: Chief Minister, why have you failed to encourage private sector investment and diversify the economic base of the ACT?
MR STANHOPE: There has been an enormous expansion of the private sector in the ACT over the last six years—in fact, in that time, an enormous expansion and diversification. That is why we have invested $26 million in NICTA. What is the single most significant diversification measure or support measure pursued for business in the past 10 years in the ACT? There was an investment of over $26 million in NICTA by this government, something the previous government would not do. There was a $30 million investment in the Convention Centre, something which the other government before we came to power was gunna do.
But of course they were gunna do a lot of things, which they never got around to. They were the gunnas. They were gunna invest in a convention centre, but they never quite managed to get the budget into surplus to allow them to do it. They were gunna support ICT, but they never ever got around to doing it.
In fact, they were gunna build a prison, until they decided, perhaps, on their polling, that prisons were something that only good, strong confident governments did and something that actually weak oppositions failed to produce. They were gunna. They were gunna build a prison. In fact, the new Leader of the Opposition had prisoners within his class of people that he will nurture and support—people at the edge and disadvantaged—until he looked at some polling and decided that there are a whole group of people that you can disparage and put down, actually at very little so-called people risk, but we will see the response to that.
Taxation
MR MULCAHY: My question is directed to the Treasurer. Treasurer, on 28 August 2007 you said during question time—and I quote:
To redress that glaring gap between expenditure and revenue, this government has taken the decisions that no other government since self-government is prepared to take to bring the two into balance.
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