Page 146 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 November 2012
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faced. And these figures never go down, so once those figures have gone up they can expect prospects, as Mr Seselja has so clearly enunciated, of similar rate rises in the following years and consecutive years.
So, at a time when people should be enjoying their retirement years, they face uncertainty, fear and upheaval in their lives. I met many of these people during the last campaign, and the message from these people and the Canberra community is a message that is lost on this government and crossbench. They refuse to listen to the community. They refuse to listen that the people of Canberra are facing pressures that they have never faced before.
Mr Barr has reinforced that government attitude here this morning, an attitude of not listening to the community and repeating a mantra that seems to be at odds with even the government’s own past policies. Mr Barr has stated here this morning that the cost of living argument is a tired argument—shame on you, Deputy Chief Minister and Treasurer, and shame on your government and party for supporting such a callous attitude to our Canberra community.
Mr Barr had a famous saying in his education portfolio that the old class warfare is over. Well, Mr Barr, it seems that you have reignited, through your callous, draconian measures, class warfare. Instead of class warfare being over, Mr Barr, you have declared class warfare over all of Canberra. That is what your actions have caused and that is what the people of Canberra are suffering through.
In Mr Seselja’s motion he also noted:
that the Labor-Greens Parliamentary Agreement does not act to reduce the cost of living pressures on all Canberra families;
A sideline, if you like, or an additional issue that this Greens-Labor parliamentary agreement also facilitates is a never before seen protection of this government from scrutiny by this Assembly. The committee system, which has in the past been a mechanism that allows scrutiny of this government, has now been neutered very effectively by this new parliamentary agreement, first of all by giving the chairmanship of three committees, education, health and planning, to government backbenchers. They are hardly likely to put this government under great scrutiny. So what we have been talking about—the third-party insurance that the Greens represented in our previous Assembly—has been exacerbated by this new Greens presence, which has been reduced to one but in effect has acted as an even greater blockage to scrutinising this government.
I thank Mr Seselja for bringing this motion into the chamber this morning. It is quite instructive that, through all of the debate that we have heard so far here this morning, from Mr Barr and from Mr Rattenbury there is not even an acknowledgement about the deep concern in our community—a concern that has been reflected in many ways, not the least of which Mr Rattenbury should be well aware of: the loss of three of his colleagues. Yet the concern of the community, the concern about the increasing cost of living, the pressures on our Canberra community, is not being listened to, acknowledged or even cared about by this government or by this coalition.
I thank Mr Seselja for his motion this morning.
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