Page 1930 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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The sources of income available to us are very narrow. They are essentially around our capacity to raise taxes and other revenue, and the sources of that are quite narrow.
Successive governments have sought to use their imagination in relation to the pursuit of other sources of revenue through some quite ingenious taxation or rating proposals from time to time. That is something which each of us has done and which, of course, we continue to do as we pursue the capacity to ensure that our revenues are able to meet the realistic expectations of the community in relation to the delivery of government services.
The Liberal Party talks about the windfall GST as being there to solve all of our problems and to meet all of our costs and needs. It should go back to some of those needs and the gaps in service. It is implicit in the question that we get enough through the GST and we get enough through existing rates, revenues and taxes to meet the expectations and demands of this community.
When we came to government we were confronted with a range of gaps in service delivery which the so-called $65 million extra GST, unexpected and unallocated, has absolutely no way of touching, affecting or meeting—such as the eight or nine per cent increase in the health budget. The last Liberal health budget, 2000-01, appropriated $415 million for health. This budget appropriates $751 million for health. Will we hear about that in 15 minutes? The budget delivered on Tuesday recommends an appropriation of $751 million for health. Your last budget, only five years ago, appropriated $415 million. Do your maths.
There has been an extra $300 million per year in recurrent expenditure over five years. Which of that expenditure, which of that extra $300 million of health expenditure over five years, is the Liberal Party suggesting we should not have made? What should we have not funded? What should we now be not funding in health? There has been an extra $300 million per year in health expenditure. We will hear in 15 minutes which parts of that $300 million the Liberal Party would not have funded. The challenge that Mr Stefaniak faces in 15 minutes is to tell us where the cuts would come, where this outrageous level of extra expenditure on health should not have occurred.
MR SPEAKER: Order! The minister’s time has expired. Before giving Mr Mulcahy the call to ask a supplementary question, I acknowledge the presence in the gallery of participants in the University of the Third Age program. Welcome.
MR MULCAHY: Treasurer, is it not true that you have been specifically compensated by the grants commission for housing commonwealth agencies here, with the attendant loss of payroll tax, and that the latest raft of levies, rates and charges is simply a cover to hit the unsuspecting people of Canberra?
MR STANHOPE: There is, of course, some adjustment through the grants commission for the taxation capacity of the territory; most certainly there is, but I go back to the point I have made that implicit in these suggestions are the expenditures that we have made in the delivery of government services, the fundamental expenditures, the $750 million in health and the $700 million plus in education. We can drill down, if you like, in relation to the pet issues that each of you has pursued, such as Mr Pratt’s request for extra police, which we endorse and actually have funded.
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