Page 2148 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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Those are the facts. Look at the record. Look at the Liberal Party’s budgets. Look at their capital budgets. Look at the rollovers. Look at the achievements. And look at the outcomes and the results of the Liberal Party’s capacity to actually run any sort of project at all.
This is a very good budget. It is a very strong budget. It is a very strong balance sheet. It is the envy of the nation. All the fundamentals are right. There are sustainable surpluses and, of course, in the environment that we are in, we are very pleased that we have sustainable surpluses. As a result of some of the volatility and the insecurity of some events around the world, including of course the eight interest rate rises that the nation suffered as a result of Liberal Party fiscal incompetence, the nation now is reaping the whirlwind of the incompetence of John Howard, Peter Costello and the Liberal Party in relation to the management of the economy, the extent to which they fuelled inflation, let inflation get away.
You see the Liberal Party here crying crocodile tears about the plight of first homebuyers. The plight of first homebuyers comes down to the fact that the Liberal Party, more concerned about re-election, allowed the genie of inflation out of the bag, and the consequence of that was eight interest rate rises in two years. A standard mortgage now in Canberra for a young Canberra family is, as we know, thousands of dollars higher than it was two years ago, as a result of the management by the Liberal Party of the national economy, its refusal to rein in its spending and its refusal to recognise the stress that inflation would cause. We know that is what it is about. An extra—what is it?—just on $400 a month now on a standard mortgage is the price that young Canberra families pay as a result of the Liberal Party’s refusal to grasp or to deal with the genie that inflation is.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—part 1.6—Territory Banking Account—$214,000 (capital injection), $12,860,000 (payments on behalf of the territory) totalling $13,074,000
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (9.16): Another year of majority government, another year in which the government failed to use its majority to correct what is probably the biggest challenge or the biggest achievement that this generation can claim in the area of climate change, social justice and environmental sustainability. Unfortunately, the achievement is predominantly negative, and that bit which is positive is unintentional.
Sir Nicolas Stern and now Ross Garnaut have realised that a tsunami of climate change problems is heading our way and they have tried to convey the urgency with which we should be reacting to these problems with which we are encumbering future generations. These economists have joined many environmental experts in trying to warn us that business as usual is contributing to the largest example of market failure in human history. Even while we sleep, funds are spent in our name which are depleting native forests, producing and marketing tobacco and other addictive drugs, supporting the worst greenhouse-emitting industries and building and marketing weapons which remain dangerous for years and are specifically designed to be used in urban civilian areas.
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