Page 86 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 15 February 2011
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MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Order, members! No conversations across the chamber, please! Could you address your remarks, interjections included, through the chair, please?
MR HANSON: You have got to look at the high average wages that we have. Indeed, that is the case, and a lot of people are doing very well in Canberra. That is great; there are a lot of people doing very well. But you have got to remember that there are a lot of people that do it really tough as well. Although we do have high average wages, there are a lot of people—they could be a nurse; they could be a childcare worker; they could be an APS5 in the public service; someone in that category who is a mother, a father or whatever arrangement they have, and they may have young children—who are struggling with the cost of education or childcare or who have got a big mortgage. These people do not classify among the 10 per cent of Canberrans who might be considered poor, but they really do struggle with the cost of living.
You meet these people on a daily basis out in the suburbs. Although they do not classify as being poor, when you look at the cost of living pressures that are being applied on them you can see that, by the time they have paid all the bills that they have, their disposable income is really minimal. Be it from the rental prices they are paying, the mortgages they have got to pay, the water prices or the electricity, what they are left with at the end of the day is minimal.
When we look at electricity costs, we see that they have risen by over 69 per cent since this government took office. Water prices have gone up over 106 per cent; rents have gone up 54 per cent; and the cost of public transport has gone up 31 per cent. But salaries have not doubled or gone up at the same percentage. You would see that if you talked to nurses, if you talked to the lower rank public service officers that we have in the ACT and in the federal public service. They simply have not kept pace: their wages have not kept pace with the cost of living pressures that have affected them.
Does the government play a role? Of course it does. The government will try and emphasise that, when it comes to these factors, the market is a significant factor. I do not disagree with that; the market does play a role. But quite clearly also the government plays a role. This is where the government needs to take some responsibility and acknowledge that its policies for the last nine years across that broad range of factors that I have just discussed have really put pressure on families in the ACT and made their lives harder. That is the net result of many of the policies.
This government is in many ways incapable of running its own budget effectively. If you look at the half-yearly reports today, you will see $200 million for the first half of 2010-11 that is above the projected figure. We see that expenditure is $36 million above the budgeted amount. And this is in an era where the government is arguing that its expenditure is restrained. It is difficult to see how the government is able to argue that the people of the ACT need to be managing their budgets more effectively when it cannot even manage its own.
Members interjecting—
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