Page 2288 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 22 June 2011
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Ms Gallagher: You did not listen to a word I said, then.
MR SESELJA: I did listen. I go back to just a couple of minutes ago. I will get you to think back to that part of my speech where I said that you started off conciliatory and then by the end of it you got to this point where you said that there is no evidence that families are struggling. You said that there was no evidence that families are struggling. You have not presented any evidence, apart from the fact that all of their essentials of life are going up much faster than their income.
If your income is going up at three per cent or four per cent a year and the essentials of life are going up at six per cent, seven per cent, eight per cent and 10 per cent a year, then that does not leave a lot left. Again, I think it goes back to this view of the world of the Labor Party, shared by the Greens, that it is really because these people go out and they buy their plasma TVs, they have these big houses and that is why they cannot afford it. That is rubbish!
Talk, in particular, to people who have purchased a home in the last few years in Canberra. Ask how many of them have bought a really, really large home. Most of them are just very happy to squeeze into the housing market. That will often be a very, very simple home. They may well have an expanding family and they will have a small home because the cost of land has gone through the roof under this government.
Madam Assistant Speaker, this amendment is an attempt to whitewash all of those things. It is an attempt to whitewash the concerns of Canberra families. All of the statistics show how much pressure there is now on the family budget and this minister wants to ignore that, pretend it is not a reality. We got to the nub of it at the end where she basically did not even acknowledge the problem. She denied that there is a problem.
Ms Gallagher: That is not true; not true.
MR SESELJA: You did. You said that I had not presented evidence. We presented all of the evidence that shows how much things are getting more expensive—how much more expensive they are.
Ms Gallagher: No, at section 2 you say that families are at breaking point. I said, “What is the evidence?”
MR SESELJA: There it is. So there is no evidence according to Katy Gallagher that families in the ACT are at breaking point.
Ms Gallagher: Oh, Zed!
MR SESELJA: You are judged by your own words. You are judged by your own words.
Ms Gallagher: Or how you twist them.
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