Page 5317 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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talk about as her personal agenda is a new phase of the old personal agenda of the old Chief Minister who left because he failed.
Openness and accountability—well, it is not working. You can talk about it, but people know that when you are talking about it you are probably not delivering it. When you are talking about talking to the banks through the next tender round to see if we cannot do something that may or may not give, that might appear or not appear to give, some sort of low interest loan to those in trouble, it means you have not done the work. It means you are so lazy that you have not asked one of the 20,000 public servants at your beck and call to do the work for you.
Instead of concrete ideas, we have got a Chief Minister who reacts and overreacts: “I need to do something. What can I say? Oh, the banks will give them low interest loans.” Well, think about that. You are putting people in debt into another debt to the banks again. You have to ask yourself whether or not that is the right thing to do, because for many of them it is not an answer. The problem for many of them is that they have not been able to get loans from the banks in the past because they have got credit problems. They have used the credit card as the answer or they have used Cash Converters or they have used finance companies that deliver at a much higher rate. They went to them in the first place because the banks would not touch them.
Your cost of living pressures keep them locked in this financial state where they cannot escape. Take the pressure off the poor, the low income earners and the self-funded retirees who are suffering at the moment because of low returns. Take the pressure off them, detail a policy, cost something, put it in the realm so that we can have a discussion, as the Leader of the Opposition has done. But, no, we get thought bubbles. What was the other thought bubble from the Chief Minister on assisting the poor? That’s right: “Turn off your Foxtel.” I go to Tuggeranong every day. I live in Tuggeranong. Unlike others, I am there all day. I have a tea and a coffee in Tuggeranong, not every couple of weeks—
Mr Seselja: Amanda went there.
MR SMYTH: Yes, Amanda went there a couple of weeks ago apparently for a coffee—not to talk to the poor or the less well off or the constituents but to have a coffee. The problem is that when you talk to them, the less well off do not have Foxtel. They cannot turn it off, Chief Minister, because they cannot afford it. They cannot afford it because they are paying your record price for a first home in the ACT, which has crossed $400,000. They are paying the highest childcare in the country. They are paying the highest rego in the country. They are paying their enormous electricity bills which will increase by $142 next year on average. They are paying your taxes and the taxes of your federal colleagues, whether it be the flood levy, the mining tax or the carbon tax.
In the end, these taxes come out of the pockets of all Australians. The Labor Party are addicted to tax. Let us face it, the Labor Party have never met a tax they did not like and have never met a tax they have never tried to implement or would not be willing to implement in future. It will be interesting when we get the Quinlan tax review. I believe it was due in August. It is now November. I am not sure what the delay is in
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