Page 113 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 December 2008
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The minister goes on to say: “A large proportion of Canberra’s workforce is employed in the government sector and, with the commonwealth’s position of increased spending, our labour market is likely to have less instability compared with other jurisdictions.” She talks about the commonwealth’s position of increased spending. But the commonwealth have cut their spending in the ACT. They are not spending in the IT sector and have not done so for 11 months. They are not spending on R&D, and have not done so for almost 11 months. They have cut funding to all the cultural institutions. If the minister can get up and detail where the commonwealth’s position of increased spending in the ACT has occurred, I would be delighted to hear it. But you go and talk to the staff at the War Memorial, at the gallery, at the National Library, at Questacon and at all the other national institutions, and they will tell you that the government have not increased their spending. And if you talk to all the firms that were expecting IT contracts, which disappeared overnight, they will tell you that the commonwealth have not increased spending.
The minister mentions later in her speech the $3 billion worth of projects likely to come on line. A serious number of those are connected to public service accommodation that the commonwealth government has had on hold since it came to office more than 12 months ago. So I would like the minister to come back into this place and justify her statement that the commonwealth’s position of increased spending means that we are likely to have less instability compared with other jurisdictions. I want to see the increased spending in the ACT.
It is interesting that in 2001 when we left office 60 per cent of Canberrans were employed in the private sector; the figure is now less than 55 per cent. The private sector has suffered under Jon Stanhope; it has not grown. Its numbers as a percentage of the workforce have declined in the last seven years. And this is “the buffer”; this is “working hard and planning well”; this is how “we have demonstrated we can achieve budget surpluses”. What they say here is that they are totally reliant on the commonwealth, and the last 12 months have not shown that we should have any confidence in the commonwealth.
This is directly in contradiction to the economic white paper which says:
We need to do this to lessen the economic dependence we have on Commonwealth activity ...
Yet again last week at COAG we had the commonwealth bailing out the states—in this case the territory’s health system—because this government did not have a plan to fund these services long term; they do not have the buffer that they talk about but have not created. They talk about “our budget is in a strong position”, and we hear from the Chief Minister on many occasions about the embedded savings from the Costello review. But we still have not seen the Costello review. We should have the Costello review tabled, because the Costello review, we believe, is flawed. We need to look at the assumptions that led to the government two years ago cutting funding to tourism in particular and cutting funding of business programs—programs that now would be reaping a benefit in our community, a dividend in our community, in increased revenue to government and increased jobs in the private sector. But of course that went out the window.
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