Page 2109 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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Once again we see evidence throughout this budget, as my colleagues have been saying, and as I can only endorse, that there is no real action being taken here; there are just promises of things that will occur. If the evidence that I have found is any indication, certainly in relation to the men's shelter in last year's budget, there is simply no guarantee that what you have promised in 1994-95 will be delivered with any greater speed than what you failed to deliver in last year's budget.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (5.38), in reply: I would like to respond, although fairly briefly, to some of the comments that have been made in the course of the debate. I reiterate what I said in bringing down this budget on Tuesday, and that is that I am very proud of it. It is a budget which is fair to the ACT community. It protects the services that this community needs, and it adds to those services in many important respects. The budget also is fair not just to the present generation but also to future generations because we have taken a very responsible attitude towards the management of the Territory's finances. We have sought to borrow only for income producing purposes, and we have restrained our borrowings to a low level. I believe that that is the appropriate course for the Territory to take as we are still in the transitional period to State-like funding levels.
We have heard predominantly from members of the Liberal Party on what they have referred to as an alternative strategy. All I can say is that it is no wonder that that strategy had to be dragged out of them. It is no wonder that they hid it in their office until ordered to produce it in this Assembly. From looking at the strategy, it is abundantly clear that all members of the Liberal Party share Mrs Carnell's view that there is no role for government in providing services. Mrs Carnell has never corrected that view, and nor should she, because all of the documentation she has produced bears it out. Her so-called draft strategy turned out to be one page, and it does not even cover all areas of service provision to the community. It leaves out health and it leaves out education. A few little things like that are not dealt with at all. The fact is, Madam Speaker, that under Mrs Carnell's strategy the ACT community would be $117m worse off. She simply has not done her sums. In the course of her remarks Mrs Carnell referred to the public sector financing requirement growing to $107m by 1997-98. She has simply misread the figures and has worked off a completely wrong premise. If Mrs Carnell had bothered to check in the "Budget Overview" document, at page 108 of Budget Paper No. 2, she would have seen that by 1997-98 there will in fact be a surplus of some $51m.
I think the mistake that Mrs Carnell has made is to misread the figures which appear under "Net Financing Requirement". It appears to me that she has interpreted all the figures with minuses as being deficits, but in fact they are not. A figure with a minus under the heading "Deficit" means a surplus. I wish Mrs Carnell were here to hear me say that, because it is an egregious error and one which she should have checked. Madam Speaker, that throws out all of the so-called work that Mrs Carnell has done. She has assured us that her programs have been "carefully costed". I quote:
They have been through a rigorous process of development since the last ACT budget, and ... are being constantly refined.
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