Page 3798 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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Everyone who was here in 1996, and I certainly was, knows what it meant for Canberra when the Howard government did exactly what is being proposed here. There were massive job losses, with a massive impact on many individuals and families, with people having to renege on their mortgages. The place went into recession. Small businesses closed down. That is what the impact of this will be.
In reflecting on this issue, it did occur to me that the policy will have an impact on housing affordability and make housing in Canberra much cheaper. Is this the Liberal Party’s housing affordability strategy? The problem, of course, is that people will not have the income to pay even the reduced housing costs.
This is a matter that we have considered before in this place. The arguments have been well made. I would, however, like to foreshadow that I will seek leave to move an amendment to note that part of the cuts includes disbanding the climate change department. I want to talk to what my amendment goes to. That is exactly what we saw happen in New South Wales. In just a matter of months, the New South Wales government disbanded the environment department. This shows very clearly the Liberal Party’s approach to the environment and climate change. This attitude was confirmed by Mr Seselja in the last couple of weeks when he said that if the decision was between protecting endangered species and development, he would choose development every time.
We know now that the Liberal Party does not believe in climate change. It does not think that polluters should pay. I would ask Mr Seselja to clarify his view on this. Should polluters pay for the carbon they emit? I also ask Mr Seselja if he actually does think that Canberrans value ecologically significant places across the territory. I was quite surprised that he does not want to do the necessary studies and so forth to ensure that we do not lose the wonderful places across the ACT that so many people enjoy, because everything needs to be razed to the ground, burnt to the ground, for development to go ahead.
The contempt that the cabinet were showing for the issue of climate change is probably not surprising, though it is genuinely disappointing and does represent an enormous retreat from the position they took to the people of Canberra at the last election. It does reflect a broader contempt for evidence-based policy. The fact that they think they could govern without the input of all the public servants who spend countless hours researching policy, and doing the work to ensure that policies are sound and achieve the desired outcomes, shows an extraordinary arrogance and a particularly poor, but not surprising, approach to the development of public policy.
Instead of listening to science, the Liberal Party have clearly said that they would rather bury their head in the sand and ignore all of the evidence. Not only has this approach been condemned by every respectable scientist working in the field; it has been roundly condemned by the economic community. They have clearly said that the cost of action is far less than the cost of inaction and that responding to climate change quickly is the most prudent economic path for change. In this place we have come to expect that the opposition will not present an evidence-based option. So again we probably should not be surprised that they support the policy to sack 12,000 public servants.
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