Page 1943 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 May 2009
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seeking of input on how we might make prudent changes. We offered to sit down with them, but we were told, “No, we cannot do that; what we will do now is spend another 12 months delaying,” when everywhere else we are seeing that action is needed.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (10.43): I wish to speak to an amendment that has been circulated in my name.
MR SPEAKER: Would you like to move the amendment, Ms Hunter?
MS HUNTER: Yes, Mr Speaker. I move:
Omit all words after “That this Assembly”, substitute:
“notes:
(1) that the ACT Budget will be in deficit well into the next decade;
(2) that the Stanhope-Gallagher Government did not publish the Strategic and Functional Review of the ACT Public Sector and Services; and
(3) that the Economic White Paper has been superseded by Capital Development—Towards Our Second Century.”.
The reason I have moved the amendment is because the Greens feel Mr Smyth’s original motion is not aimed at informing the people of Canberra in any factual manner as it is pitted with clinical point scoring and rhetoric. Therefore, the Greens’ amendment has pared down the text to address clear, constructive content. Mr Speaker, the ACT Greens have made a number of comments in the media and at budget functions in relation to the pros and cons of the budget. We will be taking the opportunity we have tomorrow in the Assembly to deliver our detailed response.
Like all Canberrans, the ACT Greens would prefer that the budget not go into deficit. But unlike Mr Smyth and the Liberals, who keep going on about how, somehow, we should have known about the global economic crisis and that it was going to hit the ACT, we understand that the ACT is not immune from global and national shifts in economies. The economic climate we now find ourselves in is very different from the climate that was out there 12 months ago and, in fact, even eight or nine months ago. We acknowledge that the ACT needs to take on the challenge of building a fairer and more sustainable Canberra economy while working our way out of recession.
While we believe there still needs to be greater clarity as to how the government is going to move out of this deficit and greater clarity to the plan, we do welcome the establishment of an expenditure review and evaluation committee as a means of regularly reviewing progress rather than just allowing things to roll through to the next appropriation. It also will allow the time over the next 12 months for departments and the government to be talking to the employees of those departments and, for instance, to the many community organisations that are funded through those departments as to how things like the efficiency dividend may apply.
I will state quite clearly here that the Greens will be standing very firmly on the issue of cuts to community organisations. We believe that if this crisis is continuing in the
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