Page 2591 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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You cannot come into this place, like those opposite do, and argue that you can reduce taxes, then argue on the other hand that you need to spend more money on a range of things—one need only look at their contributions in the budget debate so far as to where they think they should spend more money or where less money should be raised—and then think that you can improve the territory’s fiscal position. It is simply not possible.
We have heard it all before from the Liberal Party—from Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey; from Campbell Newman and Tim Nicholls in Queensland; from Mike Baird and Barry O’Farrell in New South Wales; from Denis Napthine and Ted Baillieu in Victoria; from Will Hodgman and Peter Gutwein in Tasmania; from Adam Giles in the Northern Territory; and from Colin Barnett and Mike Nahan in WA. We have seen it across the country and we have seen it in the last three years.
Make no mistake, Madam Deputy Speaker: the policy recipe from those opposite is a $400 million black hole and no solution to traffic congestion. So Canberra will end up looking more and more like Sydney. The damage is clear. We will have a huge black hole in the budget, traffic congestion like Sydney and if you live in Gungahlin it will take you an hour to get to work in Civic.
Hundreds of jobs will be lost. It is not just the public servants who will lose their jobs but also the construction workers, the engineers and all of the people who are supporting the light rail project. These are Canberrans who spend their money in our economy, who have kids to feed and mortgages to pay. They will all lose their jobs if Mr Hanson is elected.
The Liberals cannot keep spending the light rail budget over and over again. They cannot do that, Madam Speaker. It is dishonest. They have already racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in commitments and they are making more and more as we get closer to polling day. But we know what will happen. Just as we saw federally and just as we have seen in every state and territory where the Liberals have come to government, there will be public sector job losses, breaches of promises, and premiers, treasurers and others losing their jobs. (Time expired.)
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.04): I thank members for their contributions. I would have to say that it sounds a little bit like a group of people preparing for opposition with those very negative speeches. Mr Barr is prone to talk about opposition for opposition’s sake and I think that is what we heard today. They sound like a future opposition. Mr Coe made the point that they had their speeches written yesterday and they were all full of negativity and based on the fact that I was going to be just talking about light rail. They had not prepared for the fact that we have made a significant announcement today about our future. We will back our nurses and we will back our public servants across the board. We will back our nurses and we will back our doctors, who have been calling for this for a long time.
This is a long-term solution. Mr Rattenbury was talking about the need for long-term solutions, and I agree with him. In health, this is the solution that the once-proud Labor government was calling for—not anymore—and it is about the long-term future
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