Page 1609 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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The Chief Minister spins his $13.5 million surplus, excluding the growth in superannuation assets. However, it is the community that has created this surplus, not the management of Stanhope Labor. Overall tax takings have increased by five per cent and now total $924 million. Land tax is up by 14 per cent to $72 million. GST revenue is up to $823 million, an increase of eight per cent over the previous year, and despite constantly telling us that the government would move away from relying on land sales, the dividend paid to government by the Land Development Agency represents the difference between good news and bad for the Treasurer.
The Canberra community can now predict the finale to the Stanhope budget show. Next June the pork-barrelling will begin in earnest and probably take us into deficit. Any spare cash will go towards a desperate attempt to shore up credibility with an electorate that has already lost faith. Despite the promises to fix toilets and paint playgrounds, my thoughts are with those who have lost their jobs on the back of this government’s mismanagement.
My thoughts are with the families that lost their schools in the pillaging of the public education system. My thoughts are with the next generation who have lost their super entitlement under Stanhope Labor under an unfair two-tier system. My thoughts are with those who cannot afford to buy a home for their family because of this government’s pathetically slow land release program. Stanhope Labor has failed. This budget is simply the latest act in a predictable show.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.13): I am rather pleased that I get to follow Mr Seselja, because he has set the theme for the Labor Party four-act play, and I thought that, as shadow Minister for Education, I probably should put a name to that play. I was thinking about it and I have decided, being a little bit of an Italophile, that Luigi Pirandello gives us the best possible model. Remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, his famous play Six Characters in Search of an Author. This one, I think, should be “Nine Laborites in Search of Credibility”.
What is the Labor Party doing to restore its credibility in the face of the flip-flop that we have seen on the budget this year? My discussions with people about the budget have revealed a constant theme. They say, “Gee, there is a lot of bricks and mortar in this budget and every time you turn around, they are going to build something. They are going to build a new this and a new that.”
The Chief Minister said that, by 2010-11, Labor will have invested more than $350 million in our public schools. That sounds good. But, as Mr Mulcahy and the Leader of the Opposition have said, is this spending, this building and these bricks and mortar the wisest thing that we can do with the money that we have? We have pillaged and plundered the pockets of the ACT electors over the last two years. We wonder whether this is the best possible thing we can do and whether this government will ever regain its credibility.
This week marks the first anniversary of the greatest example of plunder the ACT has ever seen, and that is the announcement of the Towards 2020 so-called school renewal proposal. I remind members that it was this government over there that proposed to
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