Page 89 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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potentially, possibly, some time in two years time. I found it remarkable that the Treasurer of the ACT, on delivering a budget blow-out of about $150 million, instead of explaining in detail what he was going to do in response, spent his time trying to instigate some sort of concocted fear campaign.
As Mr Smyth has quite rightly alluded to, we are seeing Barr and Gallagher looking more and more like Gillard and Swan. We have seen a deputy, who people thought looked good as the deputy, elevated to the top job and now struggling in the top job and with a credibility problem. And we have seen Andrew Barr set himself up as an economics expert, always talking about his economic credentials. But when it came to delivering his first economic statement of any consequence he has blown the books by about $150 million and, instead of having any sort of response, any sort of vision, any sort of argument, about how this government is going to address this problem, he spent his time trying to instigate a fear campaign. No doubt that is what he will be doing in the media.
I urge people who hear Andrew Barr speaking about these matters to make sure that they hold him to account; that they remind Andrew Barr and Katy Gallagher that the budget position of the ACT is a consequence of 11 years of ACT Labor and that the excuses, the spin, the blaming of people, and in particular blaming a government that does not even exist yet, are probably wearing a bit thin.
The similarity we see between the ACT and the federal sphere is in Labor genetics. It is in their DNA. It is in their DNA to deliver greater debt, it is in their DNA to deliver greater deficit and it is in their DNA to blame it on everyone but themselves.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (4.17): For any Treasurer or Chief Minister getting up with these figures today it would not be the best news story that they would want to share with the rest of the people of the ACT. But we do need to have a look at what is going to be happening over time here.
We know that there have been ongoing issues that have flowed on from the global financial crisis. We know that markets around the world are still uncertain.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MS HUNTER: It is not hard to see, Mr Hanson, that it has been raining a long time and that therefore that is going to impact on the dividend that the territory receives from Actew, for instance. But there are some areas that I think do need closer attention and one of them is around the land release program. It is quite clear that land release revenues, as the Treasurer said, are down more than $39 million due to restricted land supply in a number of areas, and this is something that we do need to work on. We need to get it right.
There are the issues of supply and demand. We know the demand is not being met and we know the impact it has on affordability. We have heard recently the Treasurer raise the issue of the EPBC, the commonwealth legislation, and the impact it is having on getting land out there. The Greens’ response to that is that there have been occasions where a more prompt response, a more active response, from the government would have meant that we would not have had such lags in getting it out.
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