Page 2345 - Week 07 - Thursday, 4 August 2016
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services. He might like to ask the residents of Hall and Tharwa and Dunlop and Oaks Estate whether they think that their $550 every year for 20 years rather than being spent on light rail which they will not use could be better spent elsewhere.
Let me save him shoe leather; the answer is overwhelmingly that if for the residents of Tharwa and Hall and Dunlop and Oaks Estate and all the suburbs in between the benefit to them in return for paying $550 every year for 20 years is an illusion, all they need to do is consider what I have been told at my mobile offices over the past few months, and I would like to share with you some of my experiences.
Over the past few months at my mobile offices I have been inviting residents to take part in an unprompted survey as to what they see as the major priority for Belconnen. We have a board and they are asked to select one—just one—from a list of hospitals, education, municipal services, building light rail, stopping light rail, law and order, community services, transport and tax reductions. They are given an orange dot and they are asked to put that one orange dot in the place where they see their highest priority.
Nearly 320 people have participated so far—317. Health is a high priority for 86 per cent of those who participated and education for 34. Twenty participants said that light rail should go ahead. But topping the list, unsurprisingly, are the 97 participants who said they do not support light rail and they saw that stopping light rail was the highest priority that we could have in the ACT.
That is essentially a third of all people who stop and speak to me telling me that stopping light rail is for them their highest priority. Many of the people who stand there saying, “Mmm, where will I put this,” often want to put it on health or education, but they actually realise that if they do not stop light rail, we will not have the money necessary to spend on health and education. And they will say to you, “Education or health are high priorities for me, but we can’t afford to spend the money on light rail and spend it on health and education.”
I think that is a message the people on the other side actually have not got. I note the internet meme going around the other day posted by the ALP in response to a Liberal Party pamphlet with the small child from the Old El Paso ad saying, “Why can’t we have both?” The answer is we cannot have both because we cannot afford it. The average residents of Tharwa or Hall or Dunlop or Oaks Estate actually understand that. They understand something the Labor Party and the Greens party do not understand. They cannot afford it, and these people understand the cost pressures that are being put on their families because of the wrong priorities of this government, even though this government does not.
One of the things that people speak to me about most often—going back to the topic that occupied Mr Doszpot for much of his speech—is the whole issue of rates. Between 2011 and 2015 average rates in Belconnen have risen by 57.5 per cent. That averages out at almost 10 per cent a year. Mr Barr, the Treasurer, has said that he will be magnanimous in 2016-17 towards Canberrans. If you live in a freestanding house you will have a rates holiday because they will only increase by 4.5 per cent on average this year.
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