Page 3399 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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The 20 per cent gap in replacing the bus fleet is just one small example of that. The failure to maintain the bus timetables—to let that run into ruin—is another example. If this government continues to exist in this place, it will forever be playing catch-up and squandering all the good opportunities to return taxes or to return other initiatives to the people.
Let me turn to good business practice. Chief Minister, the ACT government is fundamentally a business. Good business practice would have seen it planning for and factoring in the appropriate fleet replacement strategies and the upgrades of bus interchanges, leaving some operational reserve there so that you could move quickly to address security issues and be able to ensure that your services were kept up to scratch. Government is a business. Business means that you plan, you have contingencies in place and you ensure that your fundamental services are never allowed to run down.
That is not what we see here. This government is not the government of good business practice. When the opportunity does arise to take an opportunity with a windfall in good times and with strong economic performance—to return to the people something which might give people the ability to be a little bit more independent in their own daily lives—it cannot do it.
With a well-managed government, it is possible for ACT residents to have it all—lower taxes and better services. You can chew gum and walk at the same time, Chief Minister. If you have your services and if you have these lackadaisical ministers on their toes—not running riot and wrecking the place—you can have it all. You can deliver tax cuts; you can maintain good services. It is possible.
That is why the opposition—the party of good management—can stand here today and promise to deliver tax cuts. That is why Mr Mulcahy is introducing this repeal bill. It should be done, and this is just the time to do it. But, of course, we see across the chamber a failure to be able to match the opposition in this sort of good service delivery and looking after people’s interests. I commend Mr Mulcahy’s repeal bill to the chamber.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (5.22): It might surprise the opposition to find that I am actually supporting this bill but, of course, the reasons for doing so are different to the ones that have been put forward by the opposition speakers so far. I can always hope, of course. When this act was originally debated, I agreed with the government over the need for raising revenue and broadening the revenue base, but I opposed the bill’s passage because I did not think the government had adequately dealt with the increased burden that the utilities tax would put on disadvantaged households. The impact falls unfairly on private renters and other people, such as pensioners who own their own homes, whose circumstances and financial hardships are not covered under the responsibilities of the Essential Services Consumer Council.
While that did not determine my opposition to the original bill, it did strike me at the time that I was witnessing yet another wasted opportunity to develop truly progressive revenue measures with positive social and environmental effects. Carbon taxes, for instance, can have this effect—taxes whose quantum is determined by such measures
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