Page 5978 - Week 14 - Thursday, 8 December 2011
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thousands and thousands of families who are doing it tough. Some of these may be eligible for concessions, and we welcome that very low income earners get a bit of assistance—
Mr Barr: So why did you vote against them then?
MR SESELJA: We voted against your budget because your budget was a dud. This is the thing, I mean again we hear—
Mr Barr interjecting—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Le Couteur): Mr Barr, this is not a conversation.
MR SESELJA: That is the best argument he has got, and it is a pretty weak one. We will vote for a budget when you show some responsibility—
Mr Barr interjecting—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Barr, please be quiet.
MR SESELJA: and when you stop imposing taxes on top of taxes on top of charges and burdens on families. You do not care about it. As if we are going to endorse that approach. The Greens endorsed that approach before looking at it. Not us—not the Canberra Liberals. It is the Canberra Liberals who consistently stand up for those families, and we will continue to do that.
We only have to look at the kinds of rates that are being charged. I mentioned Evatt before. Mrs Dunne, who represents the people of Ginninderra so well, along with Mr Coe, knows that in Evatt in 2001-02 a family was paying $571 for their rates. In 2011-12 that same family in Evatt is paying $1,347 for rates on average, an increase of 136 per cent.
Mr Barr: And how much is their land worth now?
MR SESELJA: Andrew Barr says they should be grateful. He interjects: “How much is their land worth? They should be grateful.” That must be a great comfort to the low and middle income families in Evatt, when they get that $1,300 rates bill from the ACT government—so they can fund their $430 million office building—that Andrew Barr says they should be grateful. “They should look down at the unimproved value and say, ‘You beauty; we’re rich; we are feeling so rich.’”
This is how they do not get it. They do not understand that cash flow matters. They do not understand that family budgets do not change just because land values might have gone up a little bit. It does not change the amount of money that is coming in every fortnight and it does not—
Mr Barr: Just as well incomes have gone up so much then, isn’t it?
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