Page 803 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 27 February 2013
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emissions, that is fine—and nationally they have done it at five per cent. But it is when you decide to go eight times that national target that you have the problem. This is the difference between those opposite and us. We believe in sound economic management and we will not impose policies on the people of the ACT regardless of the price.
Would we like light rail everywhere in the ACT? Well, probably people would. I am sure everybody would like a light rail stop outside their house. What is the cost of doing that? We know what the cost is. It is any price, because that is what we have heard from the government.
All of us in our speeches went through some examples of this, but let me be clear about the position of the budget. If we have a surplus and if we have money just pouring out of the coffers then perhaps some of these projects might be achievable. Maybe they would be worthy of support because we have so much money. We have all the money that we need for health and the ED waiting times are just tickety-boo. We have no problems with our road infrastructure. There are no problems anywhere and there are rivers of gold. But there are not.
The deficit in 2013 is $363 million. Just in the last sitting week, that went up by $82 million over the forward estimates. This year alone borrowings have increased by $100 million and now, this year, borrowings total $2.7 billion. Then we have got all these policies on top of that. We know that the financial situation globally, nationally and in the ACT is fragile. We have seen employment figures in the ACT of recent times deteriorate. So we know that we have to be cautious. We need to be cautious with our precious dollars. They are not our dollars; they are the community’s dollars. They are taxpayer dollars that are paid for by the sweat and hard work of people in our community. We need to say to people, “Where do you want your money spent?”
There are some items that we need to spend money on to make this a vibrant city. But ultimately what people want to see is hospitals that function. They want to see roads that they can drive on that are not congested. They want parking that is available and is not so prohibitive in cost that they cannot afford to park there. But what we are seeing from this government is something very different. The population of Canberra said loudly and clearly that they do not want to be going on this path that the Greens are taking us. They said, “We experimented with that in 2008 and we do not like it. We do not want to be at the extremes of a hard left Green agenda.” Their vote reflected that and, as a result, three of the four Green members lost their seats.
When I talk to people in the community—and I have a lot since the election—the Green members are pretty happy. They are not happy they lost three of their representatives, but they are very happy that their narrow left Green ideological agenda is being rolled out by the government. So they are pretty happy. There are probably some on the hard left of the Labor Party that are pretty happy too. But when I speak to a lot of people in the Labor Party or, I should say, Labor Party voters; they are perhaps from the more conservative end of the Labor Party but they have got those Labor values that we hear so much about, what they say to me—
Mr Seselja interjecting—
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