Page 460 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 17 February 2016
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As I said before, it is my belief that no-one should be left behind. That inspires me in politics, just as the forgotten people of Australia inspired the founder of our great party, Sir Robert Menzies. I believe that we have a duty to look after the vulnerable and to build a safe and fair community. We will strengthen our communities by recognising and supporting diversity in religion and in culture, and we will sustain a safe and tolerant city for all Canberrans. We will not leave the disadvantaged, disabled or vulnerable behind and we will respect and support our ageing community members. We are committed to closing the gap for Indigenous people.
We will help those who are facing the challenges of mental health, drugs and homelessness, and treat them with compassion. And there is no greater benefit for an individual or greater responsibility for a society than to help our children who are at risk of harm.
We will address housing affordability and make sure that social housing targets are for those in greatest need. We will make sure that we continue to live in a vibrant community by supporting our local arts, sport and cultural organisations, and we will focus on programs that provide benefit to our whole community. We will not unfairly increase the cost of living pressures through massive rate increases and unaffordable projects like light rail.
Politics is a matter of priorities. We will fix our health system, we will invest in education, we will build our city, we will grow our economy and we will leave no-one behind. Indeed we will do much more, Madam Speaker. We can do so much in each of these areas, across all areas of government, because we will not squander billions of dollars on a light rail network as the Barr government proposes to do.
We have already outlined a number of policies that we are committed to that highlight our different priorities. We will stop household rates increasing by 10 per cent a year as they have under Andrew Barr’s unfair tax changes. We will limit increases to government charges and taxes that continue to grow well beyond CPI. We will address the ACT’s longest wait times for emergency treatment as a priority. We will restore the 60 hospital beds cut from the proposed University of Canberra hospital by the Barr Labor government. We will restore the full $15 million cuts to police funding by the Barr government. We will place nurses in all of our special schools.
We will provide 50 additional super express buses across our suburbs. We will establish a domestic violence court. We will issue tasers to front-line police to keep them and our community safe. We will introduce coward punch laws to keep our youth safe in Civic. We will provide for testing of autonomous vehicles. We will duplicate Gundaroo Drive. We will duplicate Cotter Road. We will reduce the lease variation charge in Civic and town centres. We will build a flyover on the Barton Highway. We will create a single nature conservation agency. We will create an emergency services statutory authority. We will simplify and improve the ACT planning laws.
Madam Speaker, there is much more to come. We have done the hard work, and we have done the work that will roll out many more policies. I have the team to get this done. My team is unified, it is hard working, it is capable and, most importantly, and
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