Canberra Liberals leader Elizabeth Lee will today move a motion in the Legislative Assembly calling on the ACT Labor-Greens government to recognise that many Canberrans are facing a real cost of living crisis and to provide the Assembly with the drivers and measures to address these pressures.

Ms Lee said the ACT Council of Social Service (ACTCOSS) 2022 Cost of Living Report was damning, and outlined over the last five years, the prices of many essential goods and services have significantly increased in Canberra.

“During that time, housing is up 19 per cent; electricity is up 28 per cent; transport is up 19 per cent; gas is up 24 per cent; and medical and hospital services are up 21 per cent, just to name a few,” Ms Lee said.

“We’re seeing record inflation, escalating interest rate rises, and rises in household rates year on year with more to come, and housing affordability in Canberra at an all-time low.

• Canberrans on low incomes hit hardest by cost of living rises: ACTCOSS (6 May)
• ACTCOSS: Cost of living worsens one year after lockdown (28 August)
• Canberra an especially hard place to be poor: Anti-Poverty Week report (18 October)

“Time and time again when I have raised these very issues in the Legislative Assembly, Labor and the Greens have voted against my calls, and, instead of supporting struggling Canberrans, decided to play politics.

“Canberrans are hurting, they are feeling it at the supermarket checkout, the petrol bowser, and every time they receive a rates notice or their rent is due.”

• Liberals propose inquiry into ACT poverty (13 October)
• Governments respond to community sector’s poverty plea (21 October)

Ms Lee said every time serious cost of living pressures are raised in the Assembly, Labor and the Greens use that opportunity for self-congratulatory posturing.

“We heard recently in the Annual Reports Hearings that only 41 per cent of ACT residents who are eligible for an energy concession were accessing it, and that the Labor-Greens government has scrapped its own Affordable Home Purchase Scheme,” Ms Lee said.

“Reducing cost of living pressures must be front and centre of government policy making. We need targeted and adequate measures to help families and low-income households, and we need them now.”