Page 5489 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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“We care not just about the impact on low income families; we also care about the impact on middle income families. We care about the impact on all families.” The government should be looking to reduce these burdens, not add additional burdens, and that is, unfortunately, what we have seen.
The figures are indisputable. We heard the Treasurer today on radio claiming that the figures are selective. Let us look at the fundamentals that people need to have a basic standard of living. They need a house, a roof over their head; that is fundamental, so we talk about the cost of housing, the cost of rent. They need electricity. They need water. They need to get around, and we have highlighted public transport. We have highlighted all the key cost of living pressures as they relate to the most important things that people use. The only thing not on that list is food, which we have not touched on. But if we look at these issues where the government either has direct control—as in the case of rates, which have gone up 75 per cent over the last nine years on average—the government cannot blame anyone else for that. I will get to some of the spending decisions the government has made which have put upward pressure on these areas. The government plays a part in all of these.
Let us look at rates, because when you reel off a figure like 75 per cent across the board, it is significant. It is well above inflation in that time. You can look at the breakdown of the burden on some individual suburbs across Canberra. Some have had extraordinarily high rate increases under this government, others not as high, with the average being 75 per cent. Conder, has gone from $712 to $1,249, a 75 per cent increase; Banks, a 136 per cent increase; Gordon, an 88 per cent increase; Fadden, 73 per cent; Monash, 88 per cent; Calwell, 99 per cent—someone in Calwell in 2001-02 was paying $623 for their rates and in 2009-10 they were paying $1,242; Holder, 87 per cent; Weston, 85; Evatt, 128; Dunlop, 132; Amaroo, 85 per cent; Ngunnawal, 99 per cent; Campbell, 28 per cent; Reid, 21 per cent; Mawson, 105 per cent; and Hughes, 59 per cent.
That is a sample of the direct impact on family budgets of this government’s decisions. The government cannot run away from the fact that it is increasing the burden on households. It is increasing the burden on families. I will look at some of the spending decisions that it has made which add pressure. We have highlighted wasteful spending time and time again. We see the millions spent a year on dead running of ACTION buses, the $26 million extra in this budget for the arboretum, $5 million for a busway that was never delivered, $5 million for a communications system that was never delivered, millions of dollars lost through the mismanagement of Rhodium, $20 million by not getting the GDE right. These numbers add up to hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending. And who pays? Taxpayers in the ACT and ratepayers in the ACT. They pay directly through their rates bills, which have gone up 75 per cent.
If the Treasurer believes that rates and water and electricity, public transport and rents are somehow selective and therefore not the most important figures, I would be interested in her alternative list as to which of the far more important cost of living pressures have not gone up as much.
It is worth looking at just how this government goes about putting those extra cost burdens on households. I touched earlier on the solar feed-in tariff. Electricity prices
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