Page 1141 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 8 April 2008
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I am surprised that the ACT Liberty Party has completely departed from this position, and it is certainly not a position that I thought Mr Seselja previously subscribed to. Certainly, it is clear that the last six to 12 months have seen the global economy shift to a less stable position. This has had an inevitable impact on the Australian economy and will probably continue to create some shockwaves in our economic base.
I am not surprised to hear the ACT government use today’s MPI as an opportunity to attack the Howard government’s economic management. As I have said before, this attack is really not justified. The economic achievements of the Howard government should be lauded, as they have been by leading think-tanks and institutions abroad, rather than criticised.
The Labor Party claim that we are in some sort of economic crisis is baffling in the extreme. We have never seen prosperity such as we have seen in the last decade. A crisis is when businesses and home owners face interest rates of 20 or 22 per cent. It is when businesses fail because they simply cannot afford to operate. It is when you have soaring unemployment. It is in fact what we faced in the Whitlam years in the 1970s.
Yes, there are pressures but these are global pressures that are facing every nation in the world. When an economy the size of the United States starts heading south, it is naive in the extreme to think that smaller economies can continue to operate independently of those difficulties. It is certainly naive and simplistic to think that inflationary pressures are the result purely of the government of the day. Are we to believe that the problems besetting the American economy are because of the Howard-Costello government, the problems facing the German economy are because of the Howard-Costello government or the problems facing the French economy are because of the Howard-Costello government? For heavens sake, that is arrant nonsense and we all know it.
I have digressed slightly, but to return to the main point of this MPI: I am conscious that job cuts in the APS will have a disproportionately heavy impact on Canberra and, similarly, a reduction in commonwealth spending may well impact on Canberra businesses who supply the APS. We do not know what the impact will be because the exact nature of the cuts has still not been announced.
In our debate in March, I stated that it was important that the ACT government stood ready to react to the changes when they happen, and I welcomed the Chief Minister’s announcement that he was working with the commonwealth and the business council to absorb workers in the ACT who may be let go at the commonwealth level. I note his press release of 2 April and welcome the recruitment campaign that he announced. I agree with Mr Stanhope that it is important to keep workers in Canberra. Clearly with unemployment at 2.4 per cent, there are jobs available and it is important and represents an opportunity for the ACT public service and businesses to try to fill these jobs.
While I acknowledge that the Rudd government’s razor gang will, in all likelihood, have an impact on the Canberra community, I would caution against jumping to the
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