Page 2605 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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That, obviously, would have an impact on the budget’s bottom line, because a loss of 318 positions as opposed to 500 would mean that we are probably looking at close to a $20 million, certainly an $18 million or $19 million, shortfall in what the government is anticipating in its budget. So there are some very real questions there for the government if that figure is going to be spot-on in terms of where the government is going to find that additional $18 million or so that it needs.
I do not think we will ever see the functional review report, which seems to have been the major determinant of the shape of the budget. I think it is somewhat outrageous that the public cannot have access to this key report. It has been shielded from scrutiny by running it through the cabinet processes and I doubt that we will ever see it. But, quite clearly, everything the government has done in this budget seems to have had its genesis in that functional review report which hit the deck in early April, ranging from what has happened in the Chief Minister’s Department and what has happened across the public service generally through to what is happening now in our school system.
The water abstraction charge is an issue that one of my colleagues, Mrs Dunne, mentioned. There are some very real problems with that. It may not be that the problems alluded to in the High Court in Bayside City Council & Ors v Telstra and various Victorian and New South Wales councils versus Optus and Telstra will sink this proposal at the end of the day, but there are further issues that I recall Frank Pangallo, the mayor of Queanbeyan, discussing. He still seems hot to trot in that regard, which might cause some very real problems for the water abstraction charge. Those issues are around the question of its being an excise and commonwealth determinations and laws in about 1997 which caused some real problems.
This issue is one which apparently is going to cost Queanbeyan alone about $24,000 or $30,000, but it is one that the mayor there is going to take up. There are, I would suggest, some very real legal problems in relation to this charge which still have to be resolved. That again will have an impact on the government’s bottom line, and that again indicates, perhaps, a hastily prepared part of the budget which goes back to a knee-jerk reaction to the functional review. There are some significant problems there, significant problems not only in terms of the government maybe having to find this extra money, but also of potential extra costs if there is any type of legal challenge or any legal action in relation to the water abstraction charge. If those challenges were to be successful, costing the government in terms of legal expenses, there would be an inability to levy that charge. At best, the government would have to come back with a very different scheme to enable it to get that particular amount of money. So there are potential holes for the government in this particular area.
Mr Mulcahy: Many holes.
MR STEFANIAK: Indeed. In communications, the government is spending quite a considerable amount of extra money. I think that members on this side of the chamber regard this as blatant self-promotion which the community cannot afford. When we were in government we were regularly criticised by the then opposition if we had a minister’s picture in a glossy publication. The lot opposite were very quick to pick on anything that remotely smacked of promotion of ourselves. Indeed, if you compare what the previous government put out in the way of publications to what the lot opposite have been putting
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