Page 3408 - Week 09 - Thursday, 24 August 2017
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
There is less than a month left for Canberrans to make their views known so that we can inform the House of Representatives committee that is inquiring into this about how strongly we disagree with the proposal to decentralise away from Canberra. Through you, Madam Speaker, I encourage all Canberrans to make sure they have their say by visiting my website and adding their name to my petition.
I also wanted to update the Assembly about the petition that I and a number of other Labor MLAs, including Mr Steel and Mr Pettersson, are running on restoring the territory’s rights to determine our own laws regarding voluntary assisted dying. Almost every single state in Australia now is seriously considering voluntary assisted dying but we simply cannot do that in the ACT. This is because of the outdated Andrews legislation, made by federal politicians who do not represent us, 20 years ago.
We should have the same rights as other state parliaments. In the past month alone almost 300 Canberrans have agreed with us by putting their name on this petition. I strongly encourage the Canberra community to have their say, to sign the petition, so we can keep the pressure on our federal colleagues to give us back our right to debate these laws in this place, just like the other states have.
Budget—Brindabella electorate
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (6.04): Tonight I would like to speak about the budget as it relates to the people of Brindabella, just to summarise for them. Tonight the Legislative Assembly has passed the ACT Labor government’s budget for 2017-18, concluding two weeks of budget debate and following on from the budget estimates hearings. Through this period it has become clearer and clearer to me that the government do not care much for the people of Tuggeranong. It has become clearer and clearer to me that they take them for granted.
In the budget we have seen the government continue to ignore the people of Tuggeranong. Once again the people of Tharwa have been crying out for good consultation on the development of the Tharwa village master plan. The draft has just come out after quite some time of waiting. Finally we see some provision made for water supply for firefighting at Tharwa, after years of lobbying. A problem is that this budget removes the accountability indicators in relation to the master planning process, despite the fact that some master plans are not yet completed.
In this budget we have seen the government increase your cost of living. We see this through the ridiculous rates rises that we have all been receiving, through the increase in utility costs, and through the removal of many utility concessions that pensioners rely on. We see it in the increase in the lease variation charges.
In this budget we have seen the government try to take away our recreational facilities, attempting to close one of the gates at Googong foreshore and with the removal of mountain bike trails at Sparrow Hill and Kowen forest. We have seen the Gartside Street restaurant precinct delayed over and over again, despite being promised for years, only starting in the past week.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video