Page 3426 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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actually in a political party’s interests to bash Canberra. So we have this monumental Canberra bashing going on by the Liberal Party leadership throughout Australia for national consumption, without any regard for the implications for this community.
We need to ask: what are those people in this town that represent the Liberal Party, the party that is promising to wreak this havoc on this jurisdiction, doing about it? What has the incumbent Liberal Senator Gary Humphries done about it? Absolutely nothing. We have seen him out in the last few days with Joe Hockey, the shadow Treasurer, the person who accepts responsibility, with absolutely no words of comfort for Senator Humphries. He was acknowledging, in Senator Humphries’s presence, that, yes, that is what they are going to do, and then, through some weasel words, trying to deflect the implications of that for the ACT.
The people of Canberra should reflect that a vote for Gary Humphries, a vote for the Liberal Party in the coming election, is a vote for massive job cuts. A vote for the Liberal Party is a vote in favour of a massive assault on the people of the ACT. A vote for the Liberal Party in Canberra is a vote for a cut of 12,000 jobs. A vote for the Liberal Party is a vote against families; it is a vote against employment; it is a vote against expenditure; it is a vote against economic growth; it is a vote against this town. Tony Abbott has promised it. Tony Abbott’s big promise for the ACT, for Canberra, in the coming election is that he will cut employment, that he will cut economic growth, that he will cut prosperity, that he will cut jobs, that he will affect the living standards of thousands of Canberra families.
That is what the Liberal Party promise for Canberra if they win the election on Saturday of this week. And the Liberals in this place stand mute. They stand today—we have seen it through this motion—and lamely try to deflect attention from the reality of what it is that the Liberal Party are intent on doing. I think Senator Humphries knows the strife he is in.
There is another bit of history in relation to the Liberal Party’s attitude to these things and it is actually a piece of history which of course Mr Smyth, now the deputy leader in this place, carries around with him. But in 1996 he was a member of that Howard party room, the party room that decided on those cuts. It is interesting to reflect on this. I am sure this is not something that has escaped Mr Humphries’s attention, but Mr Smyth in 1996 was part of the policy making for his then federal party’s election campaign, a campaign that involved massive cuts to the commonwealth public service, a campaign, that Mr Smyth was a part of, to cut jobs, to cut prosperity, to bring down house prices, to send the territory into recession.
One of the consequences of that was, of course, that the people of Canberra responded to that total lack of support for this city by their federal representative, the then member for Canberra, Brendan Smyth, by voting him out of office. That is how the people of Canberra responded to the fact that Brendan Smyth did not stand up in that party room and argue against these massive cuts; nor did he during the campaign say: “I can’t cop this. I’m here to represent these people. I’m here to protect them.” He was not out on the hustings saying, “This is not good for Canberra; this is bad for Canberra.” He remained mute and defensive, sweating, probably in the same way that Gary Humphries currently is.
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