Page 1450 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 14 May 2014
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those job losses, and the commonwealth government provided support. What is estimated now from the impact from the Liberal Party’s decision to slash jobs in Canberra is that we will lose three per cent of our workforce. The cuts to our city announced yesterday will be one of the largest economic shocks experienced by a region in Australia in our history, but the commonwealth is offering no assistance to help the territory.
The key point to reinforce here about why this economic shock is different from the others is that this one is caused by the commonwealth government itself. It is driven by a dislike of the public sector. Let’s have a look at the history of recent local governments: in Queensland, nearly 13,000 jobs lost; New South Wales, 10,000 jobs; Victoria, nearly 4,500 thousand jobs lost; Western Australia, 1,000; and now we can add 16,5000 from the Liberal government federally. Contrast that with what has occurred in the ACT. We have, in fact, increased public services with 2,000 extra staff working in health, education, municipal services, community services and across the range of state and municipal services provided in the ACT over the last five years. Despite the economic hit that the commonwealth is imposing, the territory government has a plan to drive our economic growth and we will continue to invest in this community and in transformative projects for this city.
Labor will invest in Canberra; the Liberals will gut our city. That is the very clear contrast. Everyone knows it. Everyone has known for the last three decades that this city does better under Labor governments.
I do not really need to say much more than that; people will judge for themselves. They will see the contributions the respective sides of politics will make to this city’s economic growth in the future. It is very clear; it is stark: one side breaks promises and lies. We have all heard this morning the replays of the Tony Abbott press conference where there would be no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to pensions, no new taxes, no cuts to the ABC. What do we get last night? The complete reverse of all of that.
Canberra motorists in Gungahlin and in Tuggeranong, who often have the furthest to travel in order to get to their place of work, will be paying more for their petrol as a result of that broken promise. That will have an impact on this economy, and for all the talk about supporting people in outer suburban areas in Canberra, stripping away various family benefits, stripping away support for young people to access a variety of government programs and making it more expensive to get to and from work, to get your kids to school, to get to and from child care and to undertake the day-to-day activities that are part of everyday life is the legacy of the Liberal Party and its budget last night.
The challenge now is what can be done locally by this community pulling together, by the ACT government and the private sector working together, in order to facilitate new economic growth opportunities for Canberra. The government will play our part through our budget next month. We will play our part through supporting investment in new infrastructure in health, education and transport and in new business development opportunities through projects like the city to the lake.
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