Page 1467 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2007
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The government has also delivered record levels of elective surgery over the past four years, providing an extra $22 million to fund 5,000 more operations.
This budget is prudent because it makes major investments in the territory’s physical and social infrastructure, investments that allow the territory to grow but ensure that we retain a buffer against fiscal shocks.
This budget is prudent because it ensures that the government is in a position to manage the risks facing the territory. The territory, like other jurisdictions, needs to address the effects of an ageing population, growing health care costs, increasing superannuation liabilities and the needs of a growing economy.
The government is also mindful of the challenges of global climate change and water security, which have the potential to impact adversely on the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of the community.
This budget achieves all this in the context of declining commonwealth contributions to key services. For the ACT specifically, as I said earlier, between 2001-02 and 2005-06, per capita specific purpose payment funding to the ACT by the commonwealth decreased by 10 per cent. In 2001-02, the commonwealth contributed 31 per cent of the acute care costs in the ACT. That has now dropped to 23 per cent.
MS MacDONALD: I ask a supplementary question. Chief Minister, does the government stand by its use of an adjusted GFS operating balance as its headline measure?
MR STANHOPE: It needs to be understood that the ACT’s budget figures are presented on a comparable basis to the state governments. We apply the same standards and present our budget in exactly the same way as the states and territories of Australia. We had confirmed this morning that a Liberal government, if one is ever elected, will budget consistent only with the pure GFS accounting standard. I think that is the first policy commitment that the Liberal Party has made in three years, that it will, in government, utilise only pure GFS.
It is probably something of a pity that a Liberal government in the ACT would actually step aside and separate itself from the accounting practices of every other state and territory in Australia. It would be a unique situation if it were to adopt an accounting standing that would be measured inconsistently. By adopting pure GFS it would stand outside the accounting practices of every other state and territory.
But let it be said now and let it be understood that one of the reasons for moving to GFS was so that the ACT’s budgetary outcomes could be compared, like for like, with the states and the Northern Territory. That is what we have achieved in the budget that was delivered yesterday—a budget that can be compared precisely with every other state and territory in Australia.
But the Liberal Party today have announced that they will not do that. They will not account for long-term superannuation returns, as every other state and territory in Australia does; they will move to pure GFS. Mr Mulcahy, this morning in fact,
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