Page 2286 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 22 June 2011
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work with the Assembly and the community to ensure that we examine ways to ensure that those people experiencing financial hardship are provided with the appropriate assistance they need. That is the responsible response from government about how to manage cost of living pressures for the group within our community that are experiencing genuine cost of living pressures.
I think it is a bit rich for the Leader of the Opposition to argue that government fees and charges should not rise or should not rise as much as they have. Again, you have got to look at the extent to which service delivery has increased in line with capacity. There have been enormous increases in service delivery. If you look at our care and protection system, if you look at disability services, if you look at health, if you look at mental health even, you will see huge increases compared to what you were doing when you were last in government. And it is not just about the money; it is about the quality of the services you provide. The quality of the services provided are very good. The health budget has increased by 125 per cent. The largest part of the budget has increased by 125 per cent.
Mr Smyth: Yes, but that is the point. You measure the dollars; you don’t measure the outcomes.
MS GALLAGHER: The outputs are measured, Mr Smyth, as well. Hundreds of outputs in health are measured. You can focus on the two where we do not perform as well as we would like, but hundreds of areas are measured. We are offering services here that people have never, ever received in Canberra before. We have more children in our care and protection system getting better access to financial support than we have ever had before. We have people starting new services like the intentional community, which is quite an expensive service, I will be up-front. But that is a new service because that is what the community expects from us. We are going to have to fund those services from somewhere, and a large part of our budget comes from our own source revenue.
Yes, government fees and charges have gone up. Yes, service delivery has gone up—it has gone up more than those increases in our own revenue base. But wages within the community, disposable incomes, have gone up, and they have gone up faster than our own revenue has. I think we need to have this mature discussion within that context. You just cannot have it on one side. I would welcome any Liberal Party member who feels able to break off the shackles of negativity and break off the set scripts that you have—which is all about the government just increasing rates and charges—and come up with some ideas about what you would do to place downward pressure on rents. I would be very interested to hear how you will have that discussion in the community. Just what will you do to reduce private rental charges? I am sure the private rental industry will have a lot of interest in you leading that debate, Mr Seselja. What will you do? Will you change the rating system?
Mr Smyth: Well, you’re certainly not leading it.
MS GALLAGHER: Will you change the rating system, Mr Smyth? You have been here long enough. What is your view on the rating system? You obviously think it increases rents too high. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to change
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