Page 2266 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.21): I would like to start by thanking the estimates committee for the work that they have done. I participated on a number of days. I would like to say that I thought the report was very useful. I think that it was good that we did not have a dissenting report with 500 recommendations, a lot of which were just cut and paste. I look forward to reading the government’s response, but based on what the Treasurer just said, I do not anticipate that we will get much joy out of the government in regard to actually taking note of and responding to the recommendations of that report.
I would also like to acknowledge the work done by CIE and the documents that they have provided. Again, I think that they have been most useful providing information to members of the Assembly. Last time when we talked about the budget I gave my budget-in-reply speech. We come back, in essence to what we talked about on that day, which is government priorities and the difference between those opposite and the opposition in terms of our belief in the future direction that the government should take in Canberra.
It has been interesting that since I spoke I have been out talking to lots of members of the community—people who, I suppose, you would describe as influential, who are engaged, who are impacted directly in many cases in business or in the community sector as well as people at local shopping centres and so on. There is a view of the government that is emerging that I thought I would share with this place. It might be of interest to members of the government.
There is a particular view of this government that you have a group of disparate ministers with their separate agendas. You have Minister Rattenbury and Minister Corbell in their endless squabble of trying to drag the agenda to the left, be it through capital metro, environment policy or social policy and some of the planning decisions that have been made which are impacting negatively on our community. I think we just saw again today in the media the impact of some of those planning decisions on the good people of Uriarra.
We then have Mr Barr with what he would describe as an economic reform agenda, which seems to be a grab for as much money as he can possibly take out of taxpayers. I think when you look forward to the bills on Thursday you can see again, be it payroll tax, land tax or through the AG’s increase in penalty units, the government is not satisfied simply with what they are getting through the budget—the $4.4 billion in the budget. There is a need from this government to get every single cent that they can possibly squeeze out of Canberrans, be it average Canberrans through their rates or from people who are actually trying to do business in this town—the productive elements of society which are trying to create jobs, create wealth for Canberrans.
It seems that this government continues on with its agenda, which is to pursue projects which are of interest to itself—for instance, new stadiums. We saw what Jack Waterford said on the weekend, Madam Speaker. I would recommend that people read that article about Mr Barr returning to his stadium like a dog to its vomit. It is an article well worth reading. Again, it was a dissection of the city to the lake agenda:
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