Page 739 - Week 02 - Thursday, 12 February 2009
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Regarding road safety, the stimulus package in its current form intends to increase funding for local community infrastructure and local road projects. We are not opposed to using money on local roads or on local infrastructure, but one of our priorities is to ensure that any funding is used wisely and sensibly in a way that will help most Canberrans and move towards an economically and environmentally sustainable future. Road safety is also about getting more people out of cars and off the roads completely. Providing funding to improve and expand the cycle-path network in Canberra would have economic benefits for our city with the added bonus of improving the environmental future of our city.
As I have said in the last few days, we are supportive of some of the measures. One that does have some measure of support from us is the one that helps small businesses. We need to look at measures in this area and we need to ensure that those temporary business investment tax breaks are indeed going to the small and micro businesses which are struggling. At the same time, we cannot allow those businesses to overextend their debts given that we do not know what the next 18 months or so will bring. Each day, of course, brings worse and worse news. News from London this morning is that the United Kingdom is going into a deep recession. We need to make sure that these breaks do not just help small businesses get further into debt, a debt that they cannot repay. I would like to see the ACT government’s business advice services being engaged on a medium-term basis with each local small business which is getting a tax break.
The timelines on implementing the initiative and the package are tight. We need to combine these with the ACT government’s proposed stimulus package in the near future to ensure we capitalise on what, if properly managed—as we pointed out earlier this week—will be a huge boost for the ACT. There seems to be general agreement that this stimulus package is needed, although we note the Liberal Party’s concern over the ACT government’s ability to effectively implement the initiatives within the time frames. We support our federal colleagues in their efforts to improve the government stimulus package and applaud the Greens up on the hill for taking a realist approach to achieving an outcome.
When I commenced my speech I referred to the fact that it was the wording of the motion that was not making me feel terribly comfortable. Mr Seselja, I think that you wanted to ask a question during my speech. I went on to talk about some of the measures that have been considered in this chamber over the last few days. Again, we have gone through them and we have said that there are some good aspects of this package. But this plan has not been passed. We do not know what the final result will be. I think it is a little too early to be putting up a motion such as this. It is a bit too self-congratulatory in saying, “We are the Labor government down here and we are just going to congratulate our colleagues up on the hill.” “Premature” is probably the word I would attribute to this until we find out what is going to happen with this package, what the final detail will be and what it will mean. On that basis the Greens feel that we cannot support the motion. That is where we stand at this point.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.39): Ms Hunter has summed it up quite well in talking about the fact that this is an exercise in politics, which I think is a result of the goings-on in the chamber all this week. Throughout the week we have had what might
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