Page 1599 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2011
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principle of good governance and a key attribute of a good government. Fiscal discipline is a prerequisite for macroeconomic stability, it supports confidence in the economy and supports jobs and it is conducive to longer term growth. Fiscal discipline creates room to accommodate and respond to the unpredictable risks and crises while maintaining high levels of services to the community.
I am reminded of something Ms Hunter said: do not be afraid of a deficit necessarily. She also said that having an aim that we would be in surplus is laudable, and I support that view. Let me just say this: many people in this town have mortgages you cannot jump over, and their goal is to own that house; in other words, their goal is to be in surplus as a family unit. But the gauge of whether they are a strong economic household is whether they have the ability to service those loans. It is all about whether they have the income streams available to them to service their loan so that at the end of the day their dream of having a household surplus is realised.
I think we lose sight of that analogy sometimes in this place when we talk about the size of deficits that we are faced with. Certainly they are large, but I would not say they are catastrophic by a long shot—not by a long shot. And, given what we are actually getting in return in terms of the spending on social welfare projects, I think we are doing reasonably well and I congratulate the Treasurer. Having sat in the cabinet at times of need, I have to tell you that the Treasurer has done a remarkably good job to be where we are now.
Ms Gallagher: Thank you, John—and $25,000?
MR HARGREAVES: Except for the fact that I wanted $25,000 for a particular project and I wore out the trousers in the knees trying to get the 25 grand; but that strong fiscal management meant that I had to go find it somewhere else, which I did actually, Treasurer, but I just did not tell you about it.
The Treasurer also made a very important point that fiscal discipline is not an end in itself. Good governments exercise fiscal discipline but they do it to achieve their core objectives for the economy and for the community. There is no doubt that we have been faced with many challenges in the past 2½ years. World, national and local economies have been grappling with negative impacts of the global financial crisis, a term which seems to be missing from the speeches of those opposite, I might have to observe. We are also grappling with the continuing uncertainty in financial markets and the progressive rise in the costs of delivering services to the community.
The territory has been mindful of all these conflicting pressures on our budget, coupled with the rising costs of living and the decreasing level of consumer confidence. We have responded prudently to the financial crisis and as a government have undertaken sensible measures to address the substantial hits to the budget to ensure that essential services are maintained while adopting a measured approach to addressing the financial impacts.
This was the correct approach, as evidenced by the ACT’s recent affirmation of the AAA credit rating by Standard & Poor’s. The territory’s AAA credit rating is an important measure that provides the community in general with confidence that the
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