Page 5493 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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Canberra’s annual inflation rate in the last quarter was 0.7 percentage points below the national average—just under one per cent below the national average. This can be ascribed to lower than average growth in costs around food, alcohol, tobacco, housing, transportation and education. So the lower than national average CPI here in the ACT—what is it attributable to? According to the ABS, lower prices of food, housing, transportation and education and larger than average decreases in the cost of clothing and footwear. Food’s contribution was relatively high nationally due to higher positive contributions from bread and cereal products. The description is there for all to read. Those are the facts—and the facts, of course, that this motion of the Liberal Party and the leader declines to provide a context for.
Based on the data that is available, living costs in Canberra are, in fact, below the national average. It is incorrect to suggest that Canberra is more expensive than other jurisdictions. In fact, ABS data shows that Canberra is the jurisdiction with the third cheapest average retail prices behind Sydney and Melbourne. The data demonstrates that the same basket of goods bought within Canberra is around two per cent cheaper than what would be found across the rest of Australia. Those are the facts.
When you provide some context to shifts and changes, you find in relation to the most particular and most important of indicators—the CPI and cost of living—that at the moment the ACT is by and large cheaper than anywhere else in Australia. In any discussion around the cost of living, the CPI and movements in all of these indicators, it has to be borne in mind that the ACT enjoys relatively higher income levels than the national average. It would be useful for the Leader of the Opposition and the Liberal Party in this debate to note that gross income per capita increased by 66 per cent over the period in which Labor has governed Canberra and that disposable income has increased by 69 per cent.
In any discussion of these headlight numbers that the Liberal Party seeks to actually focus on today, add those extra numbers just for the sake of comparison and transparency and for an honest and open debate and conversation around these issues—that in the same period per capita income has increased by 66 per cent and disposable income has increased by 69 per cent—just to give us some comparative analysis that we can rely on.
In the May quarter 2010, average weekly ordinary time earnings in the ACT, for example, were 17 per cent higher than the national average. Moreover, growth in average weekly ordinary time earnings in the ACT over the period from February 2002 to May 2010 was 54 per cent, compared to national growth of 46 per cent. Let us, for the sake of this conversation, include those numbers and those facts in the debate—a significantly higher increase in real time ordinary time earnings over that particular period.
Going to electricity prices, I think my colleague with responsibility for the environment will speak on this as well in relation to some of the comparative analyses. In percentage terms, the rise in electricity prices over the period of almost a decade has been lower than the national average. You cannot just go out there and say: “This is the situation in the ACT. How dreadful, and how dreadful the government’s role
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