Page 2300 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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Canberrans who have worked hard, who have contributed to this community over decades and who now find themselves in the homes that they have lived in for all their lives—most of them want to stay there—being put in a position where staying in those homes is simply unaffordable. They cannot stay there because of the rates impost of this government.
We will continue to make the case against the rates increases as they are. The dry economic arguments that Mr Barr puts forward simply do not resonate when they come down to the people of Canberra. The point is that when you have a spending problem, when you are trying to build stadiums, when you are trying to build light rail, when you want a new government office building, when you want a big, new, shiny death star—we are back to that debate, Madam Speaker, sadly—then you are in a circumstance where you do need to tax people until they bleed but not until they die.
This is a government that is finding every single possible option, every opportunity, to increase taxes, rates and charges. In this budget we see rates going up by 10 per cent, and we see the bulk of other charges—parking, property charges, utilities and so on—going up in some cases at double CPI and triple CPI. How is that affordable? I look forward to Mr Barr explaining how year after year increases in costs and charges that are about 10 per cent are affordable for Canberra families when their pensions or their wages are going up, if they are lucky, two or three per cent. How does that work? How is that possibly affordable?
Mr Barr’s response that we heard in the estimates hearing was, “Get your union to negotiate you a better deal.” That is his response. What arrogance! What absolute arrogance that the response to people’s cost of living increases—the people doing it hard, people raising families and pensioners—is, “Go get yourself a better union so you get a better wage.”
Madam Speaker, if that is what it has come to with this government, then it is evident from this budget and from this minister’s statement that this is a government that has wholly lost touch with the people that they claim to represent. I do not dispute the fact that Mr Barr is very effective at getting money into the coffers. This budget makes it very clear that when it comes to that, he is an expert. He has got imaginative, innovative ways to get more money out of the Canberra population and into his pocket.
What this minister and this government have failed to do in this budget is actually deliver for the people of Canberra. What they are doing is taking more and more money out of their pockets, out of Canberrans’ pockets, and putting it into the pockets of ministers to fund their pet projects whilst the people of Canberra pay more and they get less every day from this government.
Debate interrupted in accordance with standing order 74 and the resumption of the debate made an order of the day for a later hour.
Sitting suspended from 12.32 to 2.30 pm.
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