Page 5309 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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The task of the panel will be to examine options for further supporting Canberrans struggling with their daily expenses—working families feeling the pressure and looking to their government and their community to lend support. The panel is one of the actions arising from the roundtable of community sector stakeholders held in September this year. It will look at existing programs and policies that are designed to support Canberrans on low incomes, including current concession schemes, and also analyse some of the ideas that flowed from the community sector roundtable. What we want to emerge from this work is a strategy that is evidence based, a strategy that looks at not just what the government can do but what individuals can do, what markets can do and what the community as a whole can do to strengthen the capacity of those who are struggling.
The last thing Canberrans who are facing tough times need is a grab bag of ad hoc offerings, such as those being dribbled out by the Leader of the Opposition—a few cents here, a few cents there, with no real thought about whether they will make a difference or even whether the so-called savings will be passed down the line to their intended destination. What is needed is thoughtful, evidence-based policy, informed by the expertise of those who see firsthand where the real pressures are building and where the real remedies might be applied.
One of our challenges is to see beyond this city’s general prosperity to where the real disadvantage lies concealed. It is a challenge that is perhaps more difficult in this city than in most. Recent ABS research has shown that the kinds of disadvantage experienced in the worst affected areas of the nation are also present in the ACT, but that the affected individuals are typically hidden in the areas of extreme advantage. That is why it is essential that we work closely with the community and with those organisations that have grown out of the community as we pursue this work.
The values that Labor brings to government are the same values that underpin the work upon which we now embark: a belief in equality of opportunity, a belief that the vulnerable among us deserve our support, and a belief that rendering that support helps create a community that is stronger, more stable and more resilient to whatever the future may bring.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.07): Madam Assistant Speaker, you have to ask yourself the question, when Dr Bourke brings this to the chamber: why do the ACT Labor Party hate Canberra families so much? Why is it that they think that Canberra families should be forced to continue to have the cost of living pressures piled one on top of the other on top of the other by this ACT Labor government? That is what this government are about. They have abandoned the families that they claim to represent. Long ago Labor lost the ability to represent these families, these hardworking families in the suburbs upon whom they pile cost of living pressure after cost of living pressure after cost of living pressure.
We had the amazing allegation in Dr Bourke’s speech that he is now having a go at our sporting clubs. We heard it there when he said, “When the Canberra Liberals offer relief, it may not be passed on.” Let us look at the areas where we have offered relief: registration. This is where the Labor Party says to low income Canberra families who cannot afford to pay their rego in one go: “Not only can’t you afford it, but that’s okay,
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