Page 2607 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 August 2015
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My family and friends were ACT Labor supporters but will never vote for them again and we will always vote for the ACT liberals due to nonsense rates.
This is a point that I think is an important one. At the last election there was a debate about rates and two things happened. Firstly there was some confusion about whether rates were tripled or not. Phillip Coorey discussed that in his article. It became a debate. “Rates are going up by this amount,” or, “Won’t they be going up by that amount?” We had Andrew Barr and Katy Gallagher staring down the camera saying, “Don’t worry, not in your lifetime.” I remember doing a debate on 666 with Mr Barr and he said, “No, no, this won’t happen until the end of the century.” But what we know is that in 11.6 years they are likely to have tripled. There was some confusion at the last election. The government essentially did not tell the truth about their rates program.
The second thing was that people were saying, “Even if rates are going up I don’t mind. I don’t mind if that money is going to be going into health, into education, into maintaining our roads. This is what we do pay our rates for. I don’t mind. I’ve done all right. I’m prepared to do my bit, to pay my share.” But what has happened is the light rail has come along, and now people are saying, “I’ve got my rates bill. The Libs were right. My rates are tripling. And if it were going into health, if it were going towards education, if it were going where I wanted it to go maybe even then if they are tripling I would be happy. But it is not.”
The point that so many people are coming back to us with is that this money is now being ploughed into light rail, a project that is going to service three per cent of Canberrans, a project that we know from the union poll is not popular. (Second speaking period taken.)
Out there in the suburbs you have people who are struggling to make ends meet, not the sorts of people that go for the big, swanky dinners with Mr Barr in the city and forgo their sparkling water. We are talking about Canberrans who are retirees, hardworking mums and dads trying to raise families doing it hard. What we now know is that their rates are tripling and a lot of that money, as they see it, is now being squandered on light rail. Meanwhile they wait longer in emergency departments than anywhere else in the country and we see that this is a government that instead of focusing on the rebuild of the Canberra Hospital is cutting hospital beds at the planned University of Canberra hospital.
Here is another one:
Hi Jeremy—
there is some preamble—
Most of us are really struggling and all these increases are going to put pressure on the family budget. Maybe Andrew—
and she is referring here, of course, to Mr Barr—
should try living on $578 a fortnight. I can assure you it is not easy.
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