Page 2445 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 9 August 2016
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spending too much on health and education or are we not spending enough? You cannot have it both ways.
Then when it comes to building our city, which is another one of my team’s priorities, what we have seen over the last decade is a perversion in the way that this town is planned. Because of the strangling effect of the lease variation charge, we have seen real degradation, particularly in Civic and in other town centres. What we have also seen is the manipulation of the land release system. The article in the Canberra Times that quoted Khalid Ahmed was very illustrative of what is happening.
What is happening is that we are seeing our unique Canberra suburbs, the great character of our Canberra suburbs, being eroded. Go out to Wright and go out to Coombs and look at the monolithic apartment buildings that are being built in our suburbs. Meanwhile, we see vacancy and decay in the town centres and the city centre. (Second speaking period taken.)
What we do want to see is reform of the land release system. We will talk more about that at later stages of this debate. But we also want to see vibrancy and building back into the city and into our town centres. That can be done easily through the repeal of the lease variation charge, which raises very little but stops tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars of economic activity. Not only will it create jobs, not only will it create building activity and economic activity, but it will breathe life back into our decaying town centres, including Civic.
I come next to the public transport system. I have no doubt that Mr Coe will speak lyrically about this. He has done an enormous amount of work to make the case that the tram is the wrong solution. I commend him for litigating that argument. But he has not just said what is wrong with our public transport and criticised it, whether it be the buses or the trams.
Mr Coe has released a comprehensive transport plan for all of Canberra. If you have not had a look at it, there is a website and there are brochures. It is a really good, comprehensive plan that was lauded by experts when it was released. It is to be commended. What it does is increase frequency and increase direct routes. I think the impact of it is that we have seen such a desperate attempt by this government to copy elements of it. What we have seen is a government that then at almost every step tried to mimic Mr Coe’s plan and to duplicate it because it is such a good plan. One of the best forms of praise and flattery is imitation. I think that the government’s imitation of our policies goes to the excellence of Mr Coe’s work.
I turn to the economy. I am very keen to see economic growth, strong economic growth. I unashamedly support the private sector, not at the exclusion of public sector jobs. The reality is that it does not need to be one or the other. You can be pro-business and pro-worker at the same time. I am unashamedly pro-business and pro-worker. But what we have seen emerge in this government, particularly with its closeness to the CFMEU, are anti-business practices. It is a class warfare view of the world that I think belongs better in the 1950s than it does in the modern era. But that is what we have seen.
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