Page 2094 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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Mr Wall interjecting—
MR BARR: We know what your position is on penalty rates, Mr Wall. We know you want them cut. We know you want to put downward pressure on wages. We know that. You have said it on the public record numerous times.
We now hear from the Leader of the Opposition that he wants to put downward pressure on house prices; he wants to devalue people’s principal asset. That would be the eventual outcome of the policies that he proposes to introduce, it would seem. He is saying, “We will do it over a longer period of time but we are going to do it.” That is what he has just said this morning. That is his objective, now on the public record. It will take time; he will not do it immediately. But that is what he wants to do.
That is what every Canberra home owner needs to hear from the Leader of the Opposition: how quickly he intends to move on his policy to reduce the value of their homes. That is what he has just said. He did not say he would do it in one year; he said it might take a decade. But he is going to do it. It is now on the public record. I will remind him of this every day between now and October 2020. I commend my amendment to the Assembly.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (11.07): As will surprise nobody here, the Greens will be voting for the ALP amendment. This motion is particularly bizarre given that it is about a budget which clearly the Leader of the Opposition had not seen when he wrote the motion. I was going to use the word “stunt” about it, but given the comments earlier today maybe I should not. I think it would be more fitting. I truly had no idea what was in the budget. Mr Coe, I am sure, truly had no idea what was in the budget. But he did a motion about it anyway. That is something of a waste of time or a stunt.
This motion fails in at least four areas. It uses numbers to selectively mislead. It blames the ACT government for the results of federal Liberal policies. It throws in the serious issue of homelessness, which undermines the motion’s calls. And Mr Coe has demonstrated that he does not appear to understand very much about land supply in the ACT. Whatever you may think about the powers of the ACT government—I will stop being facetious because it never looks well when it is written down—it is not within their power to increase the amount of land in the ACT.
The Greens have been talking very strongly with the Labor Party, with the government, about the need to try and increase the ACT’s border in the area of Ginninderry because of the significant governance issues there. I know the ACT government has been negotiating about that with New South Wales. As yet the New South Wales government has not seen the eminent logic of the ACT government’s approach.
But apart from that, it is really beyond me how the Leader of the Opposition thinks that the ACT government could actually increase the amount of land in the ACT. Are you proposing that we should get rid of the national park or any offset areas? It is utterly beyond me what the Leader of the Opposition thinks the government should do on that.
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