Page 4615 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 19 October 2011

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and more. We are going to take tens of thousands of dollars in stamp duty, we are going to continue to up your rates, we are going to charge small businesses”—so that they can build an office building that we do not need.

The government will be judged on this. The community will come to understand, and are coming to understand, just how out of touch this government now is and I think today’s vote is a reflection of that. And the Greens’ blind subservience to the government on this does them no credit; I think it is why we are seeing such a turnaround in the Greens’ fortunes. You only have to look at the Canberra Times poll this week; I think the Greens are polling at about nine per cent. I do not think that is any accident; people are seeing that they are just part of the coalition.

The Greens are in coalition with a bad government. They are propping up a government that has been there too long and is showing the signs. They are propping up a government that does not care about cost of living pressures, that does not care about core service delivery. They are propping up a government that simply cares about itself. As we see the Greens starting to realise this, again today they do not get it; they do not get that simply saying yes to no matter what ridiculous scheme is put forward by this government is not the way to serve the community. That is not the way to serve the community, but they have done it and they are locked in. They are locked in to this government. They will be locked in to this office block. They are locked in to the failures of this government across the board because at every turn they support it. They support ministers no matter how bad they are. They support policies no matter how ridiculous they are. They support budgets whether they fund areas of need properly or not. They fund the financial and fiscal irresponsibility. The Labor Party and the Greens are going to be held accountable for where this city is and the lack of service level in this city. Today we have a marker with the Labor Party and the Greens again voting for this project.

We will not support this project. We believe there are far more important things that this money can and should be spent on. We believe that the people in the ACT who pay so much in tax deserve a return for that. We believe that they deserve to have some of those cost of living pressures removed and we believe that when the government spends money its focus should be on core local services. That is why this motion should be supported and that is why the Labor Party and the Greens stand condemned for voting against it.

Question put:

That Mr Seselja’s motion be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

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