Page 1869 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 June 2014
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Madam Speaker, I will never sell out our children’s future the way that Katy Gallagher did. We will always be the friends of the hardworking, honest business owners who create the jobs, who create the wealth and who drive the economic prosperity of our great city.
We will create a city connected by the best road system in Australia. We will make the roads work. We will support public parking, and we will not force people out of their cars in the way Labor are, with their ideological dislike for cars, by putting parking up by 30 per cent.
We will fix the planning system, and not with some dodgy workaround that makes it easier for government projects while leaving the private sector high and dry. It is ironic that Simon Corbell and Shane Rattenbury are the ones who are trying to put politics back into planning.
We will give this territory better economic management. Andrew Barr stated that people are not just figures in balance sheets, and I agree. But that is not reflected in this budget. One look at the cost-of-living figures in this budget shows the thousands of dollars every family has to pay for a government that has lost the plot.
Andrew Barr is saying, with a straight face, that the economic support for the people in Tuggeranong—get this—is the $100 million extra on the jail and refurbishments to a tip. That is his support for the people of Tuggeranong.
The Labor Party and the Greens proudly say that they want to be the most extreme government in Australia, but my conversations, and that of my team, suggest that the people of Canberra want the opposite. They are increasingly concerned with the costs that come with a Labor-Greens government, who are running amok with the chequebook, writing cheques that ordinary families have to pay.
In response to these people’s concerns, Labor’s answer is debt. Andrew Barr thinks that increasing debt is an economic plan, and it is not. He thinks that it is fair, and it is not. And he thinks that blaming the federal government absolves him of all responsibility. Well, it does not. As Simon Corbell said on Tuesday this week, both sides of federal politics are dudding the ACT. But where was Andrew Barr and where was Katy Gallagher when Labor was getting rid of 14,500 jobs? Where were they then?
I said at the beginning of my speech that Andrew Barr’s budget speech was noted for being the shortest in ACT history. But it was also notable for its lack of passion. Madam Speaker, the big difference between us and them is that we are passionate about this city and improving everybody’s everyday lives. That is expressed in what you choose to focus on. For us, it is time to focus on what the people of Canberra want, not on what the elites and the inner circle wants.
Madam Speaker, I will say to you: I will make it very clear the difference between us and them. In 2016, we will put a stop to light rail. We will not triple everybody’s rates. We will not pursue expensive solar and wind farms all across Canberra, in people’s
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