Page 804 - Week 03 - Thursday, 2 April 2020
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states and territories and the commonwealth than I have witnessed in the last two weeks. If you do not believe me, just pick up the phone and ring one of your colleagues, because this is a truly collaborative piece of work.
At times, if you were observing from outside and did not know who was team red or team blue, you would not be able to tell. Sometimes people’s positions on these things will actually surprise you and might in fact belie your belief as to where you think they might stand on issues. I have learnt a lot about small business Liberals as opposed to big business Liberals in the context of this experience, and also Labor Party treasurers and first ministers who might view particular issues through the lens of a tenant or a business owner or from a small business perspective or a larger business perspective. It has been, on one level, fascinating to see those discussions play out and to be part of that.
I want to assure everyone in this chamber that this has been a painstaking process with the views of everyone—stakeholders, small and large states and territories, Labor and Liberal, federal and state and territory—all working towards a common goal here, which is to get people through to the other side of this. The hibernation, the building the bridge, trying to get there—I have never seen any level of collaboration like this in my entire time in politics. I want to reassure the Assembly on that point.
In relation to the response from particular stakeholder groups to what we have announced today, I thank those stakeholder groups for their input and discussion with the government in the lead-up to what we have announced today and for their strong support of what we have announced. I signal that we will continue to engage closely with them on the detailed implementation of a number of these measures. That group of stakeholders includes the Property Council, the MBA, the Canberra Business Chamber, ClubsACT, Canberra Community Clubs and the broader community sector. There are hundreds of organisations who are providing input to us.
Thank you to the 2,000 new people who follow me on Facebook who have been providing hundreds of comments and suggestions in the last two or three days. Again, I have never seen so much engagement from the community in relation to particular issues. I cannot respond to every comment across every social media platform, every email and every telephone call that we are receiving, but we thank people for their engagement. Sometimes there are very diametrically opposed views on particular issues. But we are working towards finding solutions on the topics that are of particular concern to the community. One of them the Prime Minister has today made a pretty significant statement on, in relation to free access to child care. That is one that has been raised with me regularly.
If you had asked me a few weeks ago whether we would see the doubling of Newstart, an effective universal income scheme, the nationalisation of the private health system, and free child care—which a couple of years ago, in the last federal election, was being described as communist in nature—now being implemented in Australia, I would have said no. I did not think that situation was highly likely. We do indeed live in strange times.
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