Page 731 - Week 02 - Thursday, 12 February 2009
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Chris Peters, chief executive of our local chamber of commerce, says:
The package will bolster confidence and entice business to spend on the replacement of capital. It will flow quickly because it is retail expenditure and stock is on the floor ready to go.
Chris Faulks of the Canberra Business Council supports the tax breaks for business and says business does too. David Flannery, President of the ACT branch of the Australian School of Architects, speaking about the insulation initiative, describes it as “firing up the economy” and “doing the right thing by the environment”. Heather Ridout of the Australian Industry Group describes the package as a “much-needed shot in the arm” and “together with interest rate cuts, it has been a big day for our monetary and fiscal policy”.
And what of the community sector? ACOSS’s Clare Martin says that the package will create jobs and of course provide additional public housing. Frank Quinlan from Catholic Social Services welcomes the fact that the package targets the most vulnerable. Kasy Chambers of Anglicare Australia calls the package “well-timed and targeted”. Lin Hatfield Dodds from UnitingCare says:
The energy efficient stuff is fantastic. It involves local business, jobs and moves us towards a lower carbon future.
The principal of Narrabundah college, here in the ACT, says:
This new money from the Commonwealth would really be welcomed by us and by the community.
Carl Palmer, the principal of Trinity Christian school, says:
The money will assist with a very much needed library upgrade and science laboratory and the maintenance of existing buildings. As a low-fee-paying school, Trinity find it very difficult to find the monetary resources needed to develop new buildings as well as maintain the existing ones.
The Australian Education Union says:
It’s not just the schools that will benefit from it, it will be the people working to deliver the upgrades, it’s about employment.
The Australian Farmers Federation described it as “a much-needed fillip to families and the rural economies”. It is only the Liberal Party that does not support this package. I cannot find another community-based organisation that opposes it. The only organisation in Australia that opposes this package, does not applaud it and does not congratulate the Rudd government, in the terms of this particular motion, is the Liberal Party and, in the current instance, most particularly the ACT branch of the Liberal Party. Everybody else supports it, across the spectrum—the Catholic school system, the government school system, public housing advocates, business advocates, ACOSS, every church spokesperson that represents their church; everybody supports this package and everybody supports the package in its entirety; every premier and chief minister of Australia, including the Liberal Party Premier of Western Australia.
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