Page 812 - Week 02 - Thursday, 12 February 2009
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Liberal Party and with the support and blessing and, indeed, the urging of the Leader of the Liberal Party in the ACT, Zed Seselja, and his colleagues in this place.
I have asked repeatedly over the last three days for the Liberal Party to explain to the people of Canberra which parts of the $42 billion package they did not support. We discovered today that the Liberal Party’s opposition to the stimulus package is real and is entrenched. The ACT branch of the Liberal Party has embraced and supported in its entirety the attitude of the federal Liberal Party and its federal leadership.
The stimulus package is dead; it has been defeated. The $350 million of capital that was to come to the ACT will not come. The $230 million which the government and non-government primary school sector expected to receive will not be received. The $12 billion of payments to families—Australian families, working families, young families—will not be received. The cheques will not be in the mail. The Liberal Party has seen to that.
The $102 million of funding for public housing for the people of the ACT will not be paid—the houses will not be built—because the Liberal Party has decided that it cannot support the $42 billion stimulus package. It is not prepared to support the support for the Australian economy that the federal government proposes. This is on a day on which the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that unemployment within Australia has jumped from 4.5 to 4.8 per cent. The cynics, the nay-sayers and the go-slowers do not believe that it is a crisis and that this matter should not be delayed.
Unemployment in Australia is reported today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as jumping from 4.5 to 4.8 per cent. That would be the biggest jump in unemployment for a number of years. What an irony that on the day that it is reported that unemployment across the nation increased from 4.5 to 4.8 per cent, the Liberal Party, supported and urged by Zed Seselja and his colleagues here in the ACT, have stifled, stymied, voted against and brought down the stimulus package proposed by the federal government to ease Australia through this crisis.
Given his explicit support for the position of the federal Liberal Party, it behoves Zed Seselja to explain to the 100-plus government and non-government schools why they do not deserve a boost in infrastructure support. He should go to the Catholic Education Office and explain to the chief executive officer why he, Zed Seselja, does not believe that every Catholic systemic primary school in the ACT deserves a massive boost in support of its infrastructure.
The Leader of the Opposition should actually do what the current education minister has done in his consultation with schools—that is, to go to every school, to face a meeting with every school community, as Andrew Barr has done—and explain to a packed meeting of parents and friends of each of the schools in the ACT why he, Zed Seselja, has chosen to support a policy position implemented today that has led to the non-payment to non-government and government schools in the ACT schools to a total of $230 million.
Zed Seselja should visit Shelter and talk to them about the needs of people in housing stress and to explain to them why he does not support $102 million of additional funding for public housing. He should go out and talk to those thousands of Canberra
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