Page 2344 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 August 2007

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charges which impact particularly badly on new home buyers, the sick, pensioners and low-income workers.

The commonwealth is putting its surpluses into projects that will benefit the whole community. It is investing $7 billion immediately in the Future fund, meant to underwrite public service pensions and which a Rudd-led Labor Party has pledged to raid in its pork-barrelling projects. The Howard government is investing another million dollars in the higher education endowment fund, and another $2.5 billion will be put in the health and medical investment fund. The federal government promised in the last budget to transfer $5 billion into the higher education endowment fund. So the difference between the federal government’s surplus and the ACT surplus is that one reflects prosperity facilitated by the coalition as a result of reforms of industrial relations and taxation and the other indicates the heaviness of the burden of increasing taxes and charges on individuals, families and businesses under a Labor government that thinks of squeezing money out of people regardless of deteriorating services and facilities.

On a national scale, Australia stands to reap a whirlwind of despair if Mr Rudd and his union mates get into power. It will take a few years, but nothing is more certain than that the economic mismanagement we see at state and territory levels, in varying degrees, is replicated nationally. Then the ACT government will not be able to ride on the back of a wealth-creating federal government, and we will all have big problems.

MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (3.36): In question time, the Chief Minister asserted in regard to cutting taxes that I had started with a false premise. Indeed, it was not a false premise, because the Chief Minister—and I will quote his own words back to him—said in a press release on 15 August 2007—

MR SPEAKER: I hope you are speaking to the appropriation.

MR SMYTH: I am certainly speaking to line 1.5, Department of Treasury, $35,800,000.

MR SPEAKER: That would be good.

MR SMYTH: It is about revenue, and revenue, of course, is discussed under Treasury. The Chief Minister’s words were:

While it might be tempting to see the one-off impacts on last year’s interim result as an excuse to indulge in … significant additional spending, or to cut revenue streams by winding back taxes, this would be irresponsible in the extreme. What these results—now and into the future—do allow for is some capacity for targeted, sustainable expenditure on infrastructure and priority services.

So that is what he is going to—infrastructure and priority services—no mention of tax relief in the Chief Minister’s press release. Indeed, it would be irresponsible, he said. So we look forward to the future to see whether the Chief Minister will be consistent or, indeed, whether he will be irresponsible and give back to the taxpayers some of the money that his government, under the policy outlined by Mr Quinlan, has “squeezed them until they have bled but not quite died”. This is the minister that gouges. This is the minister who gouges everyone, whether it be the property sector, small business or


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