Page 644 - Week 02 - Thursday, 6 March 2008
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embarrassment at his performance. We saw it yesterday. He comes in here and he rants and raves and fails to hang around to actually listen to the response. He must be embarrassed by that performance. But he must be even more embarrassed by how his government’s policies have affected young people and young families in the ACT.
Let us look through the legacy. Twenty-three schools closed after we were promised that none would close. They lied to the people of the ACT before the election. Then they turned around and closed 23 schools. How do you think that affects young families—young families who have to purchase a second car in order to take their kids to school, young families who have been forced into the non-government sector because they no longer have an accessible government school? How do paying school fees that they otherwise would not have been paying and buying an extra car that they otherwise would not have had to buy affect their bottom line?
This is at the heart of his argument. This will be the narrative all year. He will blame everyone else for the problems. In the good times that he has experienced he takes credit for the low unemployment. He takes credit for what the commonwealth did in expanding the public service, with all the flow-on effects. But as things get tough he fails to acknowledge that his government, far from using this billion dollar boom to secure Canberra’s future, has actually overseen a reduction in services in so many areas.
He talks about interest rates, which are a concern to all of us. But he did not blink before imposing an ongoing and permanent increase in rates and charges of around $450 per household, and that will go up with wage price inflation. That is not going to go up and down depending on how interest rates go. That will be here to stay. Young families will be paying that to prop up Jon Stanhope’s bottom line. He did not blink before imposing that. He did not blink before imposing the fire and emergency services levy and the utilities tax. He did not blink before imposing these extra charges on the people of Canberra, and young families are bearing the burden of that.
We have seen the reduction in our bus services. That, of course, affects many in the community. It affects the disabled and it also affects young families, particularly those on lower and middle incomes who cannot afford two vehicles who do rely on our bus services to get around. We have seen the impact of the cuts, particularly in the outer suburbs of Tuggeranong, Gungahlin and Belconnen.
Infrastructure investment has not been made in the areas where young families desperately need it. There is perhaps no greater example of the impact of ACT government policy on young families than the Gungahlin experience. We have seen the Gungahlin community now being forced to beg to use the pool at the Youth Detention Centre. This is the government’s attitude—
Mr Gentleman: What is wrong with Gold Creek pool?
MR SESELJA: We hear the interjection from Mr Gentleman. Labor Party policy now is that Gold Creek will do. The Gold Creek Country Club is enough. The new Labor policy on the pool in Gungahlin is: you have got enough. You have got a 25-metre pool at the Gold Creek Country Club. Isn’t it a bit extravagant to be asking
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