Page 1130 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 29 May 2007
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What do we do to cater for the extra people? We will have a crisis on our hands if the federal government gives us as an extra 5000 employees ... They are going to flood the market with 5000 public servants and we can’t catch up with housing for them and all the work we’ve done on affordable housing goes down the drain.
I would be reluctant to compare Mr Hargreaves’s approach to a Greens’ approach to life. He would be about the last person in this place that you would say that about. But I am worried that these speeches have started to sink into Mr Hargreaves and that he has started to actually embrace this back-to-basics, no-development philosophy. They are disappointed—
Mr Seselja: Negative growth.
MR MULCAHY: Negative growth, as Mr Seselja points out, seems to be the new direction for Mr Hargreaves. I hope that his colleagues can bring him back in line and let him understand that the Chief Minister’s comments in welcoming the budget are in fact in order.
Mrs Burke: Mr Gentleman says he can’t.
MR MULCAHY: I can understand the difficulty in managing that cabinet over there. It would be like herding cats indeed. But the comments from Mr Hargreaves are disappointing, and not just because he misunderstands the federal budget figures. Indeed, this is not so much a commentary on the federal budget as a sad commentary on the feeble nature of the government’s housing plan, a diagnosis coming straight from the horse’s mouth. The woeful attitude of the minister to some good news for the ACT is a sad commentary.
Of course, there may indeed be an issue in accommodating these extra people. But, firstly, it is a very welcome issue and, secondly, it is one that would not have occurred if the government had moved to address the housing crisis at any stage in the last five years while they have been in control. After all, this is not an influx of some poverty-stricken group that is going to be panhandling for change in the streets. They are well-paid commonwealth public servants who more than likely will be earning more than the average wage for Canberra workers. They will indeed need places to live, food to eat, and so on. But they will bring with them a great deal of money to buy these things.
Does a restaurant owner complain about the lunchtime rush? Does he cry out in despair that he now has to cook more food? Does a publican complain about St Patrick’s Day? Of course not. But this is precisely the attitude of the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services: “Bad news. Businesses are going to prosper. We are going to have more money spent in Canberra. There will be improved employment. Good heavens! What is this John Howard doing to the ACT?”
The federal budget, of course, is welcome news. As I said, this is a very welcome development. The federal budget provides great opportunities for Canberra, but the benefit that this budget provides will be whatever those opposite choose to make of it.
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