Thursday, 4 May 2023

Liberal Democrats policies

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (09:53): It has been a bit of a pleasant surprise over the last couple of months to see the media talking about the Labor Party apparently adopting some of our policies from the election campaign. The Age reported in March that:

Department of Treasury and Finance secretary David Martine has written to the heads of government departments ordering them to detail plans to cut their budgets by 10 per cent without harming “front-line services” …

The Liberal Democrats policy on our website states ‘a one-off immediate 10 per cent cut to all state departments, excluding critical frontline workers’. Whilst the Labor Party is seemingly taking policy advice from our website, they might also consider the next line, which states ‘an additional 1 per cent cut per year until the state government debt is repaid’. The Age also reported that the state government is considering streamlining planning approvals for new homes to allow for 1 million new houses. That is another one of our policies.

While the government seem to be open to sensible policies, I will take the opportunity to suggest some other ones from our website that they could adopt. They could consider introducing a school voucher scheme to fund students rather than schools or remove restrictions on the safe extraction of gas, or they could be bold and repeal the ban on nuclear energy.