Page 3034 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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That is the second part; you are hoping that it will increase. But even when it comes back, even when it comes right back, even if these assumptions are 100 per cent correct on revenue and we see the money come back, this government is still planning to be $200 million in deficit. They will be in a situation where, after roughly 11 years in government, they will have double the revenue they had when they came in. They will have double the revenue and yet with double the revenue, they will still be delivering massive budget deficits.
The Treasurer has constantly said, “It is the global financial crisis and it is the hit on revenue.” But at no stage has she explained that in the outyears that is not apparent. In the outyears, we are back to the boom-time best.
Ms Gallagher: Because the budget grows. The budget grows over the next seven years.
MR SESELJA: Of course it grows. But it is a massive growth.
Ms Gallagher: It is not.
MR SESELJA: It is a massive growth. It will be almost double. It will have grown by near on 100 per cent from 2001 to the outyears. That is massive growth. That is far larger than economic growth. The size of the budget is far larger than any other part of the economy. That is far larger than CPI; that is far larger than wage price inflation. The budget will have grown significantly. You would expect it to grow, but this is massive growth.
The Treasurer has been claiming that it is all due to factors outside of her control but we have not heard the Treasurer explain why, when she will be planning on getting such massive revenue—almost double what they had in 2001—they would not be able to get the budget balanced. You would think that when the revenue is back you would be able to balance the budget at the very least, yet we still are planning for $200 million of deficit in that year.
The next part of the plan relates, of course, to unallocated savings. We have unallocated savings, the efficiency dividend and we will find some other savings but we do not know really where. This is the fundamental problem with this so-called plan. Of course, it was not just the Liberal Party who had serious doubts about it. It was the entire estimates committee, having had the Treasurer in front of us and having had all of the ministers in front of us. I think it was after the Treasurer’s evidence that the concerns really started to crystallise about the lack of a plan.
We saw some of the projections for revenue growth with no substantiation for those predictions and they are contradicted by some of the other submissions received by the committee. We saw that with the Property Council. The Property Council said:
The government’s track record on controlling its spending indicates that greater commitment is required to achieve budget targets … This record will have to improve if the ACT community is to avoid the burden of crippling taxes and/or prolonged debt.
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