Page 1271 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 25 March 2009
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Labor Party advertisements. On 23 September—that is, after the Lehman Brothers collapse, which Minister Gallagher keeps talking about as being the iconic moment when the world changed: the iconic moment when the world changed and the ACT government suddenly was not responsible—suddenly, from that moment, it was world economic conditions, the global financial crisis; it was not the ACT government’s fault.
On 23 September, they uploaded an advertisement. It went for two minutes and 56 seconds, so it was probably only a YouTube video, and not too many people would have seen it. There is a quote from the Chief Minister. He said:
ACT Labor has been able to do all this—
talking about the rant beforehand about all the achievements—
and is able to deliver much more because we have been responsible economic managers who continue to deliver budget surpluses so we can prepare for our long-term future. Labor’s prepared to make the tough but sensible decisions if they are in the long-term interests of Canberra and the community.
Where is the extra 20 seconds or 30 seconds on that clip which says, “By the way, if the commonwealth government suddenly does not do what we like or if the global financial crisis gives us conditions that we cannot handle, it is not our fault and it is not our responsibility; the ACT government is not really our beast”? No, no. That was not included in the two minutes and 56 seconds. There was an extra four seconds there to round it up to three minutes, so they might have been able to squeeze something in there, but, alas, they did not. They said in that ad:
We have been responsible economic managers who continue to deliver budget surpluses.
I find that very hard to believe and I think a lot of people in Canberra are thinking that too.
They talk about talking down the economy. We have heard a couple of speeches on how the government is in fact talking up the economy. Most people here know that that is complete bunkum. Nobody would actually buy that. The government tries to wash its hands of everything and, in doing so, claims it is so bad, so dramatic, that it is totally beyond its control. But it is talking up the economy. There are some stark parallels with what the federal Labor Party is doing—a bit of solidarity there with its federal comrades.
“It will be tough, ugly and hard,” the Prime Minister has said on a few occasions. Governor Stevens of the Reserve Bank has said:
… about the biggest mistake we could make would be to talk ourselves into unnecessary economic weakness …
I will say that again:
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