Page 1597 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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The best way to characterise this budget would be to say that it is reactive rather than proactive. The government has ticked all of the boxes, provided the minimum level of services and done enough to appease the more politically empowered sections of the community after last year’s budget.
Mr Speaker, last year’s budget cut across the social plan, the sustainable transport plan and the Canberra plan. I was hoping that this year’s budget would see us back on track with those plans, because they were worked out over long years, with hard work from the community sector, from individuals and from people in government. Most people believed there was a commitment to that. Last year that commitment and that faith were broken, but this year was the opportunity to reconnect. Those plans showed that the ACT government had a sense of where it was going and that it had goals and that it was using its policies to achieve them. Budgets are the major tools by which governments achieve their policies. We need a way, a framework, for making decisions, and the people need to know where governments are taking them.
The social plan and the Canberra plan were that at the last election. We have not heard a word about them this year. What is missing is the long-term vision, the commitment to that social plan and targeted primary investment. In this budget, the government has seriously failed to implement primary and preventative initiatives. Preventative approaches are the best ways of tackling the problems of homelessness, poverty, crime and disadvantage in the ACT. Quite simply, this budget does not deliver on those critical primary initiatives.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (4.28): Mr Speaker, there is nothing innocuous about this budget. The government has tried to act like it is no big deal. Mr Stanhope has now conceded that last year “I was a bit of a mongrel” but this year is different. This year is no big deal, or so we should believe. But in truth, Mr Speaker, this year’s budget is a big deal. It is a poor budget that continues the damage that was inflicted on the ACT community in last year’s budget.
It is difficult to assess an ACT budget, because the government has been massively off the mark in its previous estimates. Under the GFS accounting method, and excluding gains on superannuation, the 2004-05 budget forecast a $356 million deficit for 2005-06. The deficit turned out to be $196 million, over $150 million different from the forecast. Similarly, using the same method, the 2005-06 budget forecast a $147 million deficit for 2006-07. This deficit turned out to be $29 million, around $120 million different from the forecast. Even using the AAS accounting method, the 2005-06 budget forecast a $91 million deficit for 2006-07 and this deficit turned out to be $120 million, almost $30 million different from the forecast.
The extraordinary thing is that this keeps happening year in, year out. I seriously wonder, as I said earlier today, why Treasury is getting it wrong so often. I know that they will say, “We rely on the commonwealth for our GST forecast and they are off the money all the time,” but I am talking about the entirety of this budget. We have been asked to consider and vote on a budget that we are told is accurate but year in, year out, the three budgets I have dealt with since being elected to this place have borne little relationship from the beginning of the year to the final outcome. One cannot imagine a business that would operate in a way that it is so constantly off the
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