Page 1718 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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for those who are already doing well; we want to make sure that all Canberrans are able to access the benefits that come with living in this beautiful city.
As the Treasurer and others have said since the budget was handed down yesterday, our budget stands in contrast to that of the commonwealth’s. We want to build Canberra up; they want to tear Canberra down. We are investing in health—we are building the UC public hospital and investing in walk-in centres and the centenary hospital; they are attacking our public health system by bringing in a Medicare tax. We are investing in education—we are building new schools and bringing a CIT campus to Tuggeranong; they are walking away from Gonski and saddling our youth with monstrous debt to go to university. We are investing directly in the creation of jobs and helping those who lose theirs; they are cutting 16,500 public service jobs and ripping jobs out of Canberra to fulfil pork-barrelling on the Central Coast. We are committed to Canberra; the Liberals are only committed to themselves.
Is it any wonder that the only real policy input we have heard from the Canberra Liberals this week has not been from those opposite but from the Young Liberals—something about corporal punishment in private schools? I did not know this was such a burning issue, Madam Deputy Speaker.
In conclusion, this budget delivers for Belconnen, it delivers for Canberra and it shows the rest of the country that progressive governments—that’s right, Labor-Green governments—can deliver essential services combined with a commitment to social justice, economic responsibility and environmental sustainability. I commend the motion to the Assembly.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Sport and Recreation, Minister for Tourism and Events and Minister for Community Services) (11.34): I thank Mr Rattenbury for moving his amendments. It gives me the opportunity to speak further on the budget, particularly in relation to the Community Services portfolio, and, of course, to provide some further observations in relation to the reaction to the budget.
I think it is quite right to raise as an area of focus in this budget the government’s commitment to supporting the most vulnerable in our community, because it does stand in marked contrast to the approach that we saw from the federal government only three weeks ago, where those who are doing it the toughest in Australian society have been asked to take a disproportionate share of the burden of what the federal government deems to be an urgent budget restoration task.
We can have a long debate—and I am sure we will—in relation to the need to slash government spending to the extent that the commonwealth government has. Equally, and perhaps most importantly, Madam Deputy Speaker, there is a very legitimate debate to be had about this: if you choose that public policy approach then who should bear the burden and pay the deepest cost associated with that course of action?
What we have seen from the federal budget and the approach of the federal government is that those who are in receipt of welfare payments or those who do not have the capacity to earn high levels of private income are the ones that are being
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