Page 3454 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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The federal and territory Labor governments have worked together to shield our community from the worst effects of that global downturn and, by and large, we have succeeded. While our forward estimates have moved into deficit, the government has a plan to return to surplus by 2013-14.
Our economy has grown. It continues to grow, even through this very difficult period. Gross state product increased by 1.4 per cent in 2008-09 and it is expected to increase in 2009-10. The trend unemployment rate in 2010 declined to 3.3 per cent, compared to a national unemployment rate of 5.2 per cent. The adult average weekly ordinary time earnings in the ACT in the February 2010 quarter were $1,443, more than 16 per cent higher than the national average.
In the year to the September quarter 2009, the ACT experienced strong population growth of 1.9 per cent. The fiscal stimulus measures of the commonwealth and local investment made by the ACT government helped sustain economic growth and minimised job losses in Canberra during the global economic downturn. We continue to enjoy a AAA credit rating. All of this the Liberals will put at risk, and Mr Seselja is more than happy to watch it happen.
Those opposite think that the 12,000 jobs that will disappear from our economy are not real jobs, that the flow-on effect to shops and other businesses are not real flow-on effects, that the money that will disappear from circulation is not real money. As the Chief Minister said yesterday, Mr Howard managed to do in 1996 what the global financial crisis could not do. He sent the ACT economy into recession with his public service job cuts.
Now Mr Seselja, Mr Smyth and Mr Hanson are sitting here on their hands and grinning like excited schoolboys in anticipation of it happening all over again. If the Liberals are elected this weekend, if 12,000 jobs are lost as promised, if commonwealth spending is cut as promised, economic growth in the ACT will be drastically slowed, local businesses will suffer, consumer confidence will plummet and a higher unemployment rate will be recorded.
What about spending cuts? What impact will there be on our town from these so-called savings? The national broadband network will be unplugged. One of the first beneficiaries was to be Gungahlin. The Liberals pontificate endlessly in this place about Gungahlin, but they will not stand up for the people of Gungahlin when it comes to the NBN rollout.
Federal Labor’s building the education revolution program, which has delivered new gymnasiums, new classrooms, new sporting facilities, new science labs, new libraries and new playgrounds in so many Canberra schools will be scrapped by the Liberals if they win this weekend. Zed Seselja, Brendan Smyth and Jeremy Hanson will be elated when this happens, it seems.
I cannot speak for Mr Doszpot and Mr Coe. Perhaps we can ask them when they get back from their excursion this morning to the official opening of a non-government school project delivered by the federal government under the building the education
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