Page 253 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 December 2008
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Mr Stanhope, the then Treasurer pledged—
that Labor’s fully-funded election promises would maintain a forecast budget surplus for each of the years of the next term.
So much for a pledge from the Chief Minister! He goes on to say things like they have been financially responsible. I think we now know that that is not true, because now, a matter of weeks later—and, as the alert amongst us will observe, just after the ACT election—we have been told by the Stanhope-Gallagher government to prepare for budget deficits. Indeed, they now walk away from that pledge that their promises and their promises alone would maintain a budget surplus for each of the years of the next term.
We have heard Ms Gallagher in this place already say, “I think what Jon said was our policies of commitment would not take us into deficit,” and, “There are forces outside our control.” I read an article from the City News:
Actually, I think that Jon’s statement is right,” Gallagher insisted. “We will not take the Budget into deficit—our policies and commitments won’t, but there are forces outside our control here.”
Parallel that to the statement where Mr Stanhope pledges that Labor’s fully funded election promises would maintain a forecast budget surplus and what we have is a pattern emerging here. We have a pattern of promises and commitments and pledges that are broken almost immediately upon the re-election of a Labor government. In 2004, after having promised not to close a school in the next term of office, 2004 to 2008, just six week after that election result had arrived, the government started planning to shut schools. That will culminate in the closure of 23 schools in the ACT.
Here we have a Chief Minister who says on 17 September, “Our promises alone will keep us in budget surplus.” Here we have in an article, on 4 December, the government is already starting the spin, “It is beyond out control; it is out of our control.” It is curious, when you reflect, that, in the good times, apparently everything good that happened in the economy, every bounty that was reaped by this government, every extra dollar that came into their coffers, was the result of their policies and the things that they had done.
No credit was given there to the external sources like the economy of the rest of the world or the fact that the Howard Liberal government had done so well in turning around the ACT economy. It was in their control when the good things were happening but it is out of their control when the bad things are happening, when the downturn finally comes in that economic cycle that the Treasurer struggles with. Is it any wonder that the Chief Minister took the opportunity—and he did with health in 2001—to slide that poisoned chalice across to Ms Gallagher? And there it will remain.
On 25 November 2008, the Chief Minister said that the prospect of going into deficit “is a very live consideration”. More recently we have the new Treasurer—she who has little idea about her portfolio, and she admits it—saying that there was a very strong chance that for the next year the ACT budget “will be in deficit”.
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