Page 5972 - Week 14 - Thursday, 8 December 2011
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How out of touch can the ACT government get? Well, let us have a look. We now have the change of use tax and the solar feed-in tariff that will continue to punish ACT residents. With respect to the change of use tax, both the current Treasurer and the previous Treasurer contended it would have no impact on the cost of land, housing or development.
When will it stop? And when will we see an end to things such as increased water prices? As I said before, we have seen a bewildering 200 per cent increase in the last 10 years in water prices. This is brought about by a range of issues which are well and truly within the capacity of the Labor government to address. They are also well and truly within the capacity of the Greens to address. We saw the unconscionable blow-out to $363 million for the expansion of the Cotter Dam and a large blow-out to $150 million in the Murrumbidgee to Googong transfer pipeline. Now those two water projects will cost Canberra taxpayers, over the life of the projects, more than half a billion dollars. That equates, as we have seen, to an extra $220 a year on every water bill in the ACT.
These issues were important issues which the Stanhope government, the shareholders—Ms Gallagher in particular as the Treasurer—took their eyes off. They let the major water security projects grow and grow without any sense of having their hand on the tiller and no sense of what was happening with the prices. When the prices blew out, all we got was the former Chief Minister being extremely unhappy and a bit angry. And what happened? Of course there was great complicity from the Greens when the Canberra Liberals attempted to inquire into this. At every attempt to get to the bottom of how these price rises came about, we were stymied by the Greens, who went in lockstep with the Labor government to cover up these issues.
In addition we saw the slow action on the Murray-Darling Basin plan which, if it had not been for the Canberra Liberals and the pressure that we applied, would have resulted in Canberra being subjected to stage 3 or stage 4 water restrictions into the foreseeable future.
Water cost increases are coupled with an increase in the cost of electricity. Electricity, as I have said before, has gone up 74 per cent in 10 years or an increase of $607 for an annual amount paid on electricity. This is another imposition that Canberra families cannot afford. There will be further burdens with the feed-in tariff raising the cost of electricity for Canberra families. Mr Corbell simply shrugs his shoulders when he fishes around for a headline but he has told the Canberra community and this place that we can expect to see electricity bills rise by $225 a year as a result of a fully implemented feed-in tariff.
Then there is childcare. Canberra now has the dismal reputation of being the home of the most expensive childcare in the country. Our childcare on average is $60 more expensive than the average jurisdiction. And this is while Minister Burch waxes lyrical about how increases in childcare are supposed to be modest. “Nothing more than a cup of coffee a week” is what Ms Burch declared. But since Minister Burch became the minister responsible for childcare, costs in childcare have increased by 17.1 per cent while the CPI has increased by 7.5 per cent. This means, of course, that
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