Page 3026 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 August 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
decisions. The functional review was but one part, albeit an important part, of the decision-making process.
What is relevant is the decisions that the government has made, irrespective of what the functional review recommended or did not recommend. What is relevant is the record investment in education, with one new school—one new state-of-the-art school, one must add—being built every year. What is important is the massive school upgrade program—every school in the territory being upgraded. What is important is the $300 million investment in health infrastructure—just the first tranche of a $1 billion investment in health infrastructure over the next 10 years. What is relevant to focus on is the $1 billion infrastructure investment program.
For the member to focus on the release of the report—the physical release of the report—is simplistic and counterproductive. The $242 million for climate change initiatives is what matters. That is what the focus should be on. The $250 million for transport infrastructure is what is important for the territory. A new women’s and children’s hospital is what matters to the community most. A new mental health capacity is what is important to the people of Canberra.
The government is more than happy to be accountable for the outcomes it has achieved for the community and for the economy through the decisions that it has made. Today members can either focus on the release of a cabinet report or look ahead to building the territory’s future. I believe that the community would prefer the Assembly to focus on building the territory’s future—building for the future, building for future economic stability. We are building for the future and the capacity to maintain a level of government service delivery that we are able to provide as a result of economic stringencies and the fact that in the ACT we now enjoy the strongest balance sheet of any government in Australia.
We had strong surpluses over the budget and the cycle; we have the capacity to fund a billion-dollar infrastructure fund through cash and through anticipated cash in surpluses predicted over the budget cycle—the capacity to plan for the future; the capacity to develop a billion-dollar infrastructure fund over and above our annual capital budget that allows us to plan the complete replication and replacement of our health infrastructure, a $300 million first tranche in this budget to deliver a women’s and children’s hospital; the capacity, through the economic stringencies which resulted from the functional review, to provide for a future commitment of $250 million in transport infrastructure, a commitment of $100 million more to our climate change initiatives and an additional $50 million for IT infrastructure within the territory; the capacity to commit $100 million to community amenity, for barbecues, playgrounds and all of those things that make Canberra the wonderful place it is and the place that we call home.
They are decisions, commitments, policies, resources, capital and programs that can be delivered only as a result of a strong balance sheet, a stringency that allows our revenue effort to match our expenditures—expenditures that still run at over 20 per cent above the national average on a revenue base that matches the national average. It is through those $100 million of embedded savings and efficiencies, which are an outcome of the functional review, that we are able to do that.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .