Page 3683 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 23 August 2011
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recognise that even if you were to double the take-up of public transport in Canberra, the vast bulk of Canberrans would continue to rely on their cars for their daily commute and for most of their opportunities in getting around.
There is this kind of hypocrisy and disdain that we see. It is a sneering attitude from the Labor Party and the Greens to people in the suburbs—the kind of sneering attitude we heard from Anthony Albanese yesterday. That kind of attitude should not be left to stand—that kind of attitude from the Labor Party and the Greens.
It was articulated by the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister had the opportunity to get out there and say what she was going to do about the cost of living for the people of the ACT. What does she say? What was her advice to the people of the ACT? She said, “You could get rid of the Foxtel for a while.”
I put that out there and I had a lot of feedback from people who heard that comment. Many of them came back. One mother with four kids who lives in Chisholm came back and said to me: “What would the Chief Minister suggest I do given that I do not have Foxtel? What would she suggest I do?” This is a family that is facing a high mortgage. They do need two cars—shock, horror—like many families in Canberra, in order to get the four kids around, to get to work. The husband works full time; the mother works part time. They have got to get the kids around, get them to school and various other places. They have two cars. They have got to service two vehicles.
This government does not care about their plight. This Chief Minister says to them, “It’s okay; get rid of the Foxtel for a while.” What do they do when they do not have Foxtel and they are already struggling under cost of living pressures? What do they do? She says, “You can get handouts.” No; they do not get handouts. The vast bulk of people are not eligible for handouts. What they want is for the government to stop taxing them so much and to have policies that put downward pressure on the cost of living. You cannot fix it all with the odd handout.
The vast bulk of Canberrans want a government, first, that gets it. Katy Gallagher has demonstrated, on behalf of the government, that she does not get it. When you think that Foxtel is the biggest thing that is holding people back when it comes to their cost of living, you simply do not get it. We only have to look at the cost of living pressures that have gone up. There is the increase of $1,696 per person in taxes. Let us take the people in Banks who have seen their rates increase by 151 per cent in 10 years. I suspect that that increase is more than the cost of a Foxtel subscription for a year.
This is the kind of attempt to trivialise the concerns that we hear from both the Labor Party and the Greens. The Greens think it is an interesting concept—an interesting concept that they are happy to add to with all of their policies. All of their policies add to cost of living pressures, because they are constantly finding new and interesting ways to spend taxpayers’ money. They have never seen a tax that they did not like. And we hear it with the Labor Party saying, “Just get rid of the Foxtel.”
The figures speak for themselves. The cost of living has gone up significantly. Anyone who focuses on the key indicators and the key issues knows that the CPI does
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