Page 3506 - Week 08 - Thursday, 18 August 2011
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cost of living increases. I think what is needed here is some understanding that governments need to raise revenue in order to run programs and offer services to the community. They do that through a various range of means. One is through their own revenue raising measures. But at the same time, for those members of the community that need extra government support, we should also be looking at how we provide assistance to them. That is going to be my focus—
Mr Smyth interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, you will have a chance in a moment.
MS GALLAGHER: over my time as Chief Minister. But I will not stand here and get into some silly argument that the cost of living will not increase. I do not expect that I will be able to hear Mr Seselja, in the context of any commitments he might give, say, “The cost of living will never increase under a government I lead,” in the terrible event that that would actually become a reality in this place.
We have to stop being silly. Government revenue will continue to grow as the community requires the level of services that we have to provide. To reduce it to this silly little debate that the Liberals have been running for the past couple of years does not give due attention to the people that we need to focus on, which is those that need an extra helping hand.
MR SPEAKER: A supplementary, Mr Seselja.
MR SESELJA: Minister, given your comments were directed at those on higher than average incomes, what do you say to the family where there is a police officer and a nurse who are on a much higher than average income but are still doing it tough?
MS GALLAGHER: Again I think, in the context of the longer interview I gave that that quote must have been grabbed from—I never saw it reported anywhere but it was a longer interview—I was talking about the choices that are available for people to reallocate their finances to meet costs where costs increase. And there are choices available to those who have higher disposable incomes and more discretionary spending. Those are choices available to people who earn higher incomes.
But I also couched it very much in the sense that there is a group emerging, those who are above the concessions threshold, who are in paid employment, who are experiencing financial hardship, and that is the next group that the government would like to focus on now that we have provided substantial increases to those who are in receipt of government concessions. We now need to look at those who sit just above it and whether there is anything we can do. Minister Burch and I are having a roundtable, I think on 1 September, to pull everyone together, all our providers—
Mr Smyth: That will fix it.
MS GALLAGHER: Mr Smyth, you might laugh at having a roundtable but actually there are a lot of good ideas that come out of them. In fact, the last idea that came out of a community roundtable was to have an emergency relief fund. I have to say that at
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