Page 4514 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
poverty in the same way as non-government communities do. Everything that Housing ACT does essentially addresses the alleviation of poverty, assists people who are living in poverty, as does almost everything that is done in the health sector, the community sector, the child and family centres—all of those things. Every time you quarantine one area, it has a knock-on effect somewhere else so that the effect in another area of government service delivery will be larger.
This is a difficult situation we are in. It is a difficult situation we have got ourselves into because of years of neglect by the Stanhope government when they spent money but did not put any away for a rainy day. Last week when I was attending the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s meetings in Arusha, this was one of the great areas of discussion: what impact has the global financial crisis had on democracies? It was very interesting to hear the work that has been done by innovative economies to cushion themselves from the economic downturn—to anticipate it, to cushion themselves—and to look at small economies that are doing very well and continuing to do well even in a time of financial crisis.
I refer to not just small and prosperous economies like the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. All of them have had funds put aside for a number of years; the budget surpluses were put away for a rainy day. That is something that we have not done in the ACT. But countries like Barbados, Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands are putting away for a rainy day money out of their surpluses so that they can provide assistance to people in financial crisis, so that they do not have to cut back on vital community services when they meet a financial crisis.
That was an opportunity that was squandered by the Stanhope government in the good times. When there was lots of GST revenue, when there was unprecedented revenue from stamp duty and property sales and things like this, we missed an opportunity. Other economies did not miss that opportunity; other economies like Jersey and Guernsey and the British Virgin Islands—small economies, sometimes quite poor economies—had money in store so that they could supplement people who were confronted adversely by the economic crisis that we have confronted. And some of those economies have continued to grow despite the global downturn.
It is not just a matter that we are poor waves upon a huge economic sea. Other countries and other small economies have done it a lot better than we have. What we are here today doing is, in a sense, wringing our hands after the fact that we are now in strife—strife brought about by the Stanhope government. But this strife will not be solved, sadly, by quarantining one part of the economy and having a bigger impact on other parts of the economy.
I understand why Ms Hunter has proposed this course of action, but I do not think that it is economically responsible, in the same way as the profligate behaviour of the Stanhope government over the past seven years before we hit the global financial crisis was not economically responsible. Therefore, I will move my amendment to omit paragraph (3)—not because we do not think the position put forward by Ms Hunter is unimportant, but because we think it would be economically irresponsible. I move the following amendment to Ms Hunter’s motion:
Omit paragraph (3).
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .