Page 2095 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
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A core part of the re-election deal that was struck between Labor and the Greens was the issue of public housing. I know the Greens take their agreement seriously as an example of contract parliamentarianism and consider the Greens-Labor agreement to be a binding document. Yet we have seen this week that the cost of one of those deals on public housing will punch a billion dollar hole in the budget. We are told, this week also, by the government that it will not be delivered in this term.
It is now up to the Treasurer to put on the record when it will be achieved and how much it will cost. You simply cannot have it both ways on this issue. Either you mean the promise, either it is an aspiration you are going to move towards, in which case you have to set out a time frame on how you are going to get there and how you are going to pay for it, or, if you did not mean it, you should say so; you should acknowledge that you never meant to get there.
But the point does need to be made that, for every year that that promise is delayed, the cost grows. It is 10 per cent of public housing stock. The numbers grow every year and the Labor Party, in particular, needs to outline how they will pay for it. If they never meant it, if they did not want to pay for it, if they do not plan to fund it, they should say so. There is no plan to answer concerns.
We have of course been subject to the cries of despair from those opposite that we might dare call into question this budget, that we have the cheek to ask questions about a $770 million black hole in our bank balance. They have pulled, with amazing swiftness, one of the standard tools in the Labor arsenal of deflection: if you do not have the answers, attack the person asking the questions.
We have seen beyond doubt that this budget presents us with a problem but not a solution. It expressly, carefully lays out exactly what they will not be doing. The plan for recovery that Katy Gallagher refers to shows what they intend to do for the next 12 months. There it is in budget paper 3, on page 19. Nothing! That is what it says. There is a zero there. How can that possibly be a plan? Katy Gallagher is trying to paint this as the long-awaited change to consultation from this government but a look at their recent actions suggest this government has still not learnt its lesson.
The plans to purchase Calvary Hospital, for example, were not released to the public. In fact, Katy Gallagher had the temerity to say she had put all her plans on the table before the last election, when we now know that negotiations had been in train for months. This is not a plan for consultation. It is a chance for the Treasurer to cross her fingers and hope for the best, because things are so different from those which the Treasurer expected.
We have also been accused of inconsistency. It is not inconsistent to recognise that, as we face difficult times, action should be taken, not put off until next year. It is not inconsistent to suggest we should both cut wasteful spending in some areas and increase value-for-money spending in areas that need it. It is not inconsistent to say we should spend less than you make and should make every dollar count. This budget does spend more than we will make, long after the GFC is passed and the revenue is back on track, and we cannot count the dollars to be saved because the Treasurer is not sure where to save nearly $100 million.
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