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Rather than do that, it is very important for us to search out and target the sorts of businesses we need to give us the increase that we want. I suspect that the vast majority of the decrease is related to the construction industry. In economic terms, the construction industry should be following productivity, not leading a positive surge.

Since 1989 the Grants Commission money for the ACT has dropped by 49 per cent. We have heard the rhetoric of everybody who has been Chief Minister. There is a handful of them here. They point to each other, saying what a good job they have done and what a lousy job the other one has done. It is important to note that we are not in economic dire straits at all, in spite of the fact that the Commonwealth have already halved the funding that they provide to the ACT. I think it is very important that we keep that in perspective. It is also important that we recognise what has happened with our State relativity. Supposedly, we are going to be put on a State-like funding base. In fact, we are put in a very bad position compared to the States. Historically, the Federal Government has delivered the lowest per capita share of general revenue assistance to New South Wales and Victoria, the bigger States. On the basis of 1 being an equal share, New South Wales receives 0.87 and Victoria 0.85. The only other jurisdiction that is below 1 is the ACT, at 0.89. Thanks to the Labor Federal Government and thanks to the Grants Commission process, apart from the very large States, we have the lowest per capita contribution from the Commonwealth. There is some irony in that, considering that we make by far the highest per capita contribution in taxes. When we talk about dire straits, it is worth keeping those issues in mind.

Mr Speaker, I mentioned earlier that this is a budget for the big end of town, and I defined what I meant by that. The $13m reduction in payroll tax is really going to ACT big businesses - those with 25 or more employees - as is the $10m tourism and marketing money. One has to ask: How much of that will reach genuine small businesses? Whom was the Labor Government really trying to assist in this area? Mr Osborne used the term “mates”. I think he used it in a very generic sense. We have to be careful how we use that term here, because it has more implications than the meaning I believe Mr Osborne intended. He was referring to the people you associate with generally rather than people you associate with specifically.

Where should the money be going? If we talk about real wealth, we can do as Mr Stefaniak did and quote Chessell and Hughes, who count dollars and cents, or we can look at the general changing discourse on this subject. The World Bank, as set out in a recent report, found that the real wealth of nations can be measured by how they deal with such areas as health care and education. If we look at such reports and then look at some of the fancy fiscal fiddling of the figures in this budget, we realise that things have not been presented as well as they might have been.

Mr Speaker, the Health Promotion Fund is a particularly good example. The Chief Minister, in her speech this morning introducing the Bill to separate the Health Promotion Fund, and in a press release that followed, said that an extra million or so dollars is going into the Health Promotion Fund. On page 26 of the easy-to-read Budget Paper No. 2 we see that the funding of $2.1m is up $1.25m on the 1994-95 outcome. I emphasise that it is outcome as opposed to appropriation.

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