Page 1320 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 June 2020
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We advocated for basic urban services projects to get underway as quickly as possible as a stimulus for our city. We called for the government to book and pay for school excursions and carnivals with tourism operators to help them with their cash flow. We advocated to safely reopen all local schools. We launched a love your local campaign to support local businesses. We pushed for a tailored and safe approach to reopening the hospitality sector, and so much more.
Throughout this period, we have been in very close contact with the small businesses of Canberra, and we will keep serving them as their representatives, rather than a government that dictates to them. At every turn the government say no, and that is if they respond at all. The government simply said it was in the too-hard basket. They said everybody needed to share the pain. It seems that the entity that took the least pain was, in fact, the Barr Labor government.
The government were always more interested in what was easiest for them rather than what was in the best interests of Canberra. Their approach was lazy. Their so-called economic survival package has so many elements that are not available for struggling businesses, and so many elements that were so complex that some people did not even bother applying. We see that with commercial rates relief.
If you are serious about saving jobs and keeping small business doors open, you do everything you can to back them in. This government has taken the same contemptuous and lethargic approach to this as it takes to everything else. One employer here in the city told me business owners were told to work it out themselves.
Some are deferring payments. However, all this does is accumulate debt, placing business owners in unfathomable stress. It is heart-wrenching listening to these long-term business professionals share their stories. I cannot express the emotional devastation and desperation in their voices. This is impacting not only their business, families and financial stability but their health and wellbeing as well. The government’s decisions, or lack thereof, have very real consequences for Canberrans.
The Canberra Liberals have not just called out Labor’s tripling of rates over the last decade; we have actively campaigned every single day for genuine rates relief because we know that when the government drives up rates by seven, eight, nine, 10, 15 per cent year on year; it increases rents and pushes more and more families to the brink.
Since 2012 the number of households in the ACT that have applied for a rates deferral has increased by more than 1,000 per cent—tenfold. Tenfold is now the number of families that cannot pay their rates and need relief. Every single day there are more and more examples of families that are doing it tough.
Deb from Fisher emailed me to say:
Our life has become too far in Canberra. Rates are the biggest killer for most people.
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