Page 1322 - Week 05 - Thursday, 31 May 2007
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This really is beyond the pale. For the government to hold that they have never incurred a deficit is simply ridiculous and is belied by their own Treasury and their own budget. There it is in black and white in the budget papers year in, year out. I have got them in my office. I imagine every member here has the budget papers in their offices. He knows the truth of it. This is an attempt to mask the fact, as is plainly available in the budget papers, that this government has not been able to balance the books.
It is clear that sustainable provision of services, which Ms Porter proclaims to this Assembly are so important, is vitally important for the ongoing operations of government. I do not think we would disagree with you there. This service delivery should not rely on constantly increasing levels of rates and charges, and certainly should not rely on revenues from land sales or asset appreciation or expected gains in superannuation assets.
In light of the fact that the 2007-08 ACT budget is just around the corner, it is imperative that Mr Stanhope become more acquainted with the concept of sustainable service delivery. The government must learn to listen to criticism and must make sure that its readings of its own budgets are in line with proper practice recommended by its own Treasury.
It was interesting that when I responded to the first budget here after being elected to the Assembly in 2005-06, I was howled down when I said that we need to move away from AAS and move to GFS. I was told that was preposterous, that what was in place was great. And what happened 12 months later? Suddenly this is the great way to go. The backflip was extraordinary. Obviously, after Mr Stanhope managed to get himself across some aspects, the Treasury people impressed upon him the need to make this reform, a reform, incidentally, that was demanded by the credit rating agencies that were insistent on the ACT bringing itself up with modern practices in the management of public finances.
I have to take issue with something else that was said in the previous speaker’s remarks. She said there was no crisis last year, that the government simply reached this view that it was spending 20 to 25 per cent too much on services and that it was going to take a new approach to the way it does things. There was a crisis. I met with Standard & Poor’s. I sat down with their top people, and they said that the ACT was on the verge of getting a downgrade of its credit rating if it did not change the way it was operating. It was not just over the accounting system. It was over the way this territory was managing its affairs.
If we had had that adverse credit rating outcome, which we came very close to experiencing, it would have had ramifications on the territory in a host of different areas. So whilst I commend the Treasury for getting their act together and persuading, no doubt, the government to make these reforms and to rein in some of its activities—a reining in, incidentally, that the Attorney-General says is impossible to do—we saved the bacon in terms of the credit rating. But it was a very close call because this cabinet had taken its eye off the game.
Mrs Burke: It is about management, something you do not understand within your own business.
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