Page 461 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 February 2020
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Unfortunately, in light of the remarks he has made today, it is necessary to reflect on the position that Mr Coe and the Liberal Party have frequently taken that stands in the way of these kinds of reforms. For example, the Liberal Party did not support Greens legislation that implemented a variety of flexible payment options to assist people who are struggling to pay traffic fines and parking fines because of their circumstances. Those are changes supported strongly by the ACT community sector, including ACTCOSS, which Mr Coe cited this morning, the organisations that deal with people who are financially struggling, and that see the spiral of hardship that these fines can cause.
The Liberals did not support the payment of fines by community work or social development programs. Mr Coe also said that the Canberra Liberals do not support the waiving of fines, not even in special circumstances, even when someone might be homeless, have a serious illness, be financially destitute or have some other life circumstance. That is a harsh position but it is also an inconsistent position, which makes the harshness even more stark, because in other circumstances the Liberal Party do advocate for the waiving of fines. For example, in instances where people have received parking tickets for parking illegally at school fetes or at cricket matches, the Liberal Party have advocated for all of those fines to be waived.
That really makes one wonder what the underlying philosophy is here. Mr Coe says that the Liberal Party will not support the waiving of fines, not even in special circumstances. That could be, for example, a person in severe financial hardship who has no home, who is living in their car and who receives a parking fine. But in other situations the Liberal Party are happy to argue for blanket waivers. Maybe it is just a populism thing or maybe there is a deeper philosophy. I will leave it to others to speculate on the motivations.
The second example that I want to highlight is the Liberal Party’s opposition to the government’s energy efficiency improvement scheme. The Canberra Liberals say they support low income households, but they recently voted against the legislation to continue this important and effective scheme. This is a scheme that recently won a national award for its effectiveness in supporting low income households. It has already saved $15 million off the energy bills of ACT low income households, and over the lifetime of the scheme it is expected to deliver $240 million in savings for households and businesses. These are real cost of living savings, yet Mr Coe and his Liberal colleagues voted against this scheme, a position that flies in the face of their claim to support low income people and to want to help people with their household costs.
An issue you always hear the Greens raise in the context of cost of living is the issue of climate change. Unchecked climate change is an economy destroyer. People who care about social equity should care about climate change because it is the most vulnerable in our communities that are most impacted, and we saw that through the course of this summer. The spiralling costs to communities from extreme climate change scenarios are astronomical, and we all have to pay.
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