LIBERAL Mark Parton is calling on leaders of the Legislative Assembly to condemn Federal Finance Minister and ACT senator Katy Gallagher for backflipping on her pre-election promise and to waive the historic ACT public housing debt.

Parton, the opposition housing spokesman will put forward a motion in the Legislative Assembly today calling for cross-party support. 

He says Gallagher campaigned to waive the ACT government’s $98.3 million public housing debt during the 2022 federal election campaign, however  last week, the now Finance Minister is quoted as saying: “The federal government is not in a position to waive the territory’s historic housing debt”.

Parton claims that, iIn opposition, Senator Gallagher was critical of the federal coalition government for not having waived the ACT’s historic housing debt. In 2019, at Senate Estimates Gallagher said to then Senator Zed Seselja, as Assistant Minister for Finance: “You’re in a position of power. You get to sign it off”.

Parton says that by not waiving the debt, it shows that public housing is not a priority for Federal Labor and it is not a priority for the ACT Labor-Greens government.

“If the Chief Minister and his Greens colleagues are serious about public housing in the ACT, they will agree to this motion, condemn Senator Gallagher in the strongest terms on her backflip and call for the debt to be wiped,” Parton says.