Page 486 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 17 February 2016
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agreements between the government and the community sector about the length of time of consultation and the period during which consultation is not adequate. But again that appears to have been ignored in this case.
Only a few days after the public consultation closed on 12 February the Chief Minister announced possible changes to the concessions program. This, to me, raises questions about the seriousness with which the Chief Minister took the comments raised in that consultation that were put forward to him.
Mr Barr interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Barr!
MS LAWDER: It is one of those examples of a sham consultation, the consultation you have when you are not really having a consultation because you are going to go ahead and do whatever it was that you intended to do in the first place.
Mr Barr: Read it. Read the article. What did I announce?
MS LAWDER: The Chief Minister, when he spoke, complained about interjections across the chamber which, of course, we would take a lot more seriously if he did not do it all the time.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ms Lawder, I have already asked Mr Barr to come to order, thank you.
MS LAWDER: Certainly. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. How the Chief Minister considered those comments from the consultation in just a few days remains to be seen.
Cost of living pressures are something that face all Canberrans. It is even worse for those people on low incomes for whom, for example, housing takes up a very large chunk of their disposable income. They are already living in housing stress or even housing crisis. Rates and taxes, drivers licence, registration cost, they are all going up time and again, far more than CPI.
We all know the reason for that largely is to fund this government’s ideological, reckless, headlong pursuit of light rail, and those charges are going to keep going up and up and up. We all know that, and it is something that constituents raise with me time after time. Targeting people on low incomes, disadvantaged Canberrans, in a cash grab to help fund the light rail, is completely unethical.
In the Canberra Times on Tuesday there were some supposed changes flagged to the concessions program, including reconsidering the no-rates policy for community groups, schools, childcare providers and sports groups, to name a few. That will be interesting, if that comes about. We already have the most expensive child care in Australia here in Canberra. If we are going to remove the no-rates policy for childcare providers, we know that that cost is going to be passed onto consumers. So we will go from having the most expensive child care in the country to the most ridiculously out
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