Page 2336 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 5 June 2013
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MR BARR: This is one that I am pleased you raised, Mr Coe. Let me read the sentence from the cost of living statement:
ACT residents are on average relatively younger, have a higher level of education and higher incomes than the rest of Australia. Canberra families have an average of 1.8 children and 48 per cent of people aged 15 and over are married.
That is an ABS statistic. That is the figure they use, 15 and over. The reason they do so, Mr Coe, if you had read the commonwealth Marriage Act—
Mr Coe: You are right, I have not.
MR BARR: You have not read the commonwealth Marriage Act? It does say that a person who has attained the age of 16 years but has not attained the age of 18 years may apply to a judge or magistrate in a state or territory for an order authorising them to marry a particular person. All we have reported in the cost of living statement is the ABS measure of the number of people 15 years and over who are married. And yet that leads to a rather perverse series of questions suggesting that—what?—we are supporting 15-year-olds getting married or something. It is weird.
What the cost of living statement says is a statistical fact, that 48 per cent of people aged 15 years or over in the ACT are married. There is nothing too controversial in that, I would have thought. Perhaps the only controversial element there that relates to the Marriage Act is the exclusion of a large number of Canberrans from the opportunity to get married. But that is another debate, one we will have another day.
In the budget the government has set out a plan to build a healthier and smarter city, to transform our city through urban renewal, to grow the territory economy and to improve the liveability and opportunity that our city offers our citizens. We do have the highest incomes in the country. We are the healthiest, smartest and most productive members of the Australian community. We as a community devote more money and volunteer more time to community activities than our counterparts across the country. I think it is against this backdrop that we need to look at our capacity within each budget to provide assistance to those in need and to ensure that we are targeting concessions for low income households to meet cost of living expenses.
If you look at the detail of our population, at the 2011 census 10.7 per cent of our population was 65 years of age or over and 25.3 per cent were 19 years of age or under. Employment status in the ACT mirrors that of the rest of Australia, with 65 per cent working full time and 25 per cent working part time. The majority of households, just over two-thirds, own their own home, with or without a mortgage, while just over 30 per cent rent.
The vast majority of households own at least one motor vehicle. The median weekly family income for families with children was $3,060, compared to $2,310 in the rest of Australia. In the last 12 months, wages in the ACT increased by 3.4 per cent, from the March quarter 2012 to the March quarter 2013. That was above the national
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