Believe Canberra is better now than in 2001? You'd be in a coma, Parton says

Opposition Leader Mark Parton has declared anyone who thinks Canberra is better now than in 2001, when his party was last in government, is in some kind of coma.

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Mr Parton marked the 25^th anniversary of the Canberra Liberals being consigned to the opposition benches after Jon Stanhope led Labor to victory with a reheated slogan, urging Canberrans it was "time to break free of the shackles of ... hard Labor".

Opposition Leader Mark Parton with his Canberra Liberal colleagues on City Walk on Wednesday. Picture supplied

"I think that anyone who believes that this city is better now than it was 25 years ago is in some sort of coma because it's clearly not, and you know, you've just got to walk around the city now," Mr Parton said on Tuesday.

"It's not just about the construction. It's about the graffiti. It's about the level of lawlessness. It's about how difficult it is to get anything done in this town, but it's also, on a broader picture, about the fiscal sustainability of the ACT."

The Canberra Times considered some key metrics to examine whether the data backed up Mr Parton's claim the capital was better a quarter of a century ago.

The capital continues to have one of the world's lowest homicide rates. Domestic and family violence offences have increased, along with recorded sexual assaults.

The number of burglary offences have fallen by more than 75 per cent between 2001 and 2025 in the ACT, despite a large overall increase in the population, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed.

But emergency department waiting times have got worse, dropping from a nation-leading 78 per cent of patients seen on time in 2000-01 in the ACT to 62 per cent seen on time in 2024-25, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare figures showed.

Housing affordability has also significantly worsened in the past 25 years. In 2001, the average full time earnings in Canberra was $956.10 a week, just under $50,000 a year. The median house price was $206,300, about four times an individual's annual earnings.

Now, the average full-time earnings in Canberra are just over $119,000 a year, the highest in the country, but the median house price is sitting over $1 million. A detached house now costs more than 8.5 times the average Canberran's annual earnings.

The ACT was home to 308,764 people at the 2001 census and the estimated population is now 489,668, on track to reach 500,000 next year.

Gross state product in the ACT has grown from $44,191 per capita in 2001 to $119,544 in 2024-25. Adjusted for inflation, it's an increase of about 40 per cent.

The ACT's gross household disposable income per capita has grown in the same period from $34,300 to $104,130, and now sits 66 per cent higher than the national rate.

In 2001, Canberra had the highest life expectancy: 82.9 years for girls and 78.5 years for boys. Boys born in the ACT between 2022 and 2024 could expect to live for 82 years and girls for 85.8, both higher than the national life expectancy.

On Wednesday, Mr Parton repeated his claim, declaring Canberra was "definitely not a better place now than it was in 2001".

Pressed on the claim about a city that had chalked up years of economic growth and recorded rapid population growth, Mr Parton acknowledged there had been some improvements.

"But they're absolutely outweighed by the things that have dragged this city down and I'm not prepared to continue to accept those things and most people aren't either," he said.

Mr Parton was joined by his party room in City Walk at lunchtime on Wednesday to mark the quarter of a century Labor had spent governing the ACT.

"We stand here before you after 25 years of Labor government in the territory just to say that we'd like to make things better and we believe that it's time for Canberra to break free of the shackles of 25 years of hard Labor," he said.

"And I know that sounds like a quirky line, but it's the reality."

Mr Parton said it would be absurd to outline the opposition's policies now but a Liberal government would be focused on making it easier to run businesses and buy homes.

"There will be something in our bag of tricks that will appeal to [voters] because when you see the full policy suite, it is a policy suite that's going to make life easier for many Canberrans," he said.

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