Page 1429 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
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MR HANSON: You would not bother, no. Okay. If you turn to the—
Mr Seselja: It’s just economics.
MR HANSON: Yes, it is economics; that is right. It is not monergy.
I turn to some of the significant concerns that have been raised by members about this government’s obsession with inputs and disregard for outputs. If you look just in the portfolio of health, which the Treasurer also has, we now have health costs increasing in the ACT at 11.1 per cent. That is more than in any other jurisdiction in Australia. Look at some of the excessive costs in that area. The cost of the hospital car park has gone up and there is the fact that in the ACT we pay more in just about every area for our health services than anyone else. But then you look at the service that we are receiving and across just about every area in health—be it primary health, GPs, in terms of access and the amount that we pay; hospitals, with the amount of time that we wait in our emergency departments and for elective surgery—you see that this government is putting a lot of money in but we are not getting a lot out as a community. Others have expressed that that is the case across other portfolio areas, whether it be in terms of our infrastructure, our road systems, in education or in other areas.
Examples of some of the wastage that we have seen occurring are the hospital car park that doubled in price; the GDE and the government’s failure to duplicate that road when they should have; roadside art; advertising; and the AMC, not only in the sort of bizarre artworks that have been put there but in this government’s failure to even consider and discuss with New South Wales the prospect of bringing their prisoners, their regional prisoners, from Cooma or Yass or Queanbeyan into the AMC which would actually draw revenue into the ACT. They have ignored that issue. Last week we heard that the mental health facility has gone up by $3 million, and from the debate that we had earlier today we know that the government still want to spend $77 million on transferring ownership of Calvary. It will cost us $160 million over the next 20 years.
But you have got to remember that this government, for all its boasting, has failed to deliver much for what it spent. But it was actually given the gift of GST revenue. The revenues that have come into the ACT government’s coffers since this government has been in power have almost doubled. Why? I will tell you why. It is because of the good work done by the Howard government in those 11 years that the Howard government was in power, in particular its decision, against Labor Party and Greens opposition, to implement the GST.
The reason that this government has been the beneficiary of almost $2 billion of extra revenue per annum has been directly as a result of an initiative brought in by the Howard government but rejected at every level by every state Labor Party across this country. They sit here and say: “We spent this money. We spent that money. Aren’t we wonderful?” But where does the money come from? It comes directly from the GST that was a Howard government initiative—and this government here are so quick to ignore that.
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