Page 1786 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2016
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We continue to invest in our city’s and territory’s environment, not just through our nation-leading target of 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020 but through significant investments in cleaning up our city’s waterways and in expanding our city’s nature reserves.
As I said yesterday, this is a budget for a better Canberra. The amendment that I have moved today reflects the true situation of the territory budget and the territory economy, and I am delighted to commend this amendment to the Assembly this morning.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.27): Firstly, I would like to thank Mr Smyth for bringing this motion before the Assembly today and highlighting some of the gaps between the rhetoric that we hear from Mr Barr and from the government and the reality, particularly the reality that is being felt by so many Canberra householders: people who, as a result of this budget, will continue to see their rates going up exponentially, well above CPI. For units, there are 20 per cent increases, which is just cruel.
The machiavellian and disingenuous nature of putting on an election year pause is not being lost on anyone. Indeed I have been receiving many emails and texts from a variety of people, in the media and in business. They are not being fooled by what is clearly an election year budget to try to provide a few sweeteners that extend only for a year.
As we have seen with the green bins policy that Mr Barr just talked about, it is in one small part of Canberra. It is the ACT’s biggest backflip after this government fought against it for so long. I must say that when the Treasurer was talking about this yesterday, at least Mr Corbell had the decency to turn bright red, as opposed to Mr Barr, who was quite happy to announce this policy for one small area of Canberra after railing and arguing against it for the previous eight years.
As I said yesterday, and as I will say more formally tomorrow in my budget reply, the government is proceeding with the tram. Based on the government’s own released figures, it will cost $1.65 billion over the next 20 years, and that is in addition to the Capital Metro Agency costs and a number of other associated costs. It means two things. It means that we will continue to see the sort of pain that is being inflicted on Canberra families through ever-escalating rates increases and increases in the cost of living across a whole range of parking, rego, drivers licence fees and so on. It also means that is money that cannot then be allocated to other important services across our community: in health, education and things like a better bus service. The Canberra Liberals have released a bus plan—a transport plan—for all of Canberra, to introduce the sort of significant reform that we need in public transport in this town.
The other thing that Mr Barr has been saying is that the tram can be done and we can get back into surplus. It is a little bit like what happened with Wayne Swan. We have a Treasurer who promises these illusionary surpluses that are always just over the horizon. In reality, since he has been Treasurer, we have seen deficits. I am sure Mr Smyth will have the exact figure, but it is about $1.1 billion in deficits that Mr Barr has actually delivered. Although he touts his credentials as an economic
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