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Canberra Today 12°/15° | Saturday, March 30, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Local reactions to Budget 2014

joffrey

THE responses from Canberra’s leaders to the 2014 horror budget with its 16,500 public service job losses are rolling in.

Green MLA Shane Rattenbury is not impressed saying “The Abbott Government’s first federal budget is a reverse Robin Hood effort – robbing the poor to pay the rich.”

The Liberals’ Zed Seselja on the other hand was celebrating the small bone thrown to him from the budget feasting table, “$26.8 million over three years towards new accommodation for the Department of Social Services, keeping more than 1800 staff from the Department in Tuggeranong.”

The Canberra Business Council on the other hand appears to be a bit conflicted. They’ve expressed disappointment there’s no money for building “The Australia Forum” (a mooted convention centre by Lake Burley Griffin), they’re not happy at what they expect to be 6,500 job losses here in Canberra (as opposed to the wider public service), but they do like the general tone of the document with its cost cutting and company tax reductions.

Local Labor figures have gone strangely silent while the local Liberals’ PR man Joe Prevedello has gone so far as to take the day off.

Meanwhile the internet has thrown up the Unwise King Joffrey’s thoughts on the budget via Game of Thrones.


UPDATE: Just before 2pm the day after the budget local Labor members sent forth their response:

“Andrew Leigh, Gai Brodtmann and Senator Kate Lundy have condemned the Abbott Government’s first budget as an attack on Canberra that Liberal Senator Zed Seselja has failed to stop.”

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

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