Page 1948 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2011
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MR COE (Ginninderra) (4.29): In my maiden speech in 2008 I said:
I believe that good public policy is best achieved when government focuses its efforts on its core functions and doing them well.
Unfortunately, this budget and the government’s aims do not comply with that.
Yet again, we have a government that spend taxpayers’ money according to their partisan ideological agenda, which is one of big taxes, red tape and a lack of attention to core business. For once, it would be nice to see this Labor government focus on outputs rather than inputs. For once, it would be nice if the government focused on what services were being delivered for the money rather than simply seeing spending money as being an achievement in itself.
The Leader of the Opposition, Zed Seselja, has clearly articulated the tremendous pressure Canberra families are facing at the moment. Whether it be house prices and the cost of rent, soaring electricity and water prices, the cost of parking, increases to rates and other charges, Canberrans are doing it tough and are not getting much in return for the government’s expenditure. Can anyone actually say that their lives are better now than they were when Labor came to power 10 years ago? Can anyone actually say that we have a better quality of life as a result of increase after increase to the taxes, fees and charges we all keep paying?
Instead, the result of the record revenue for the government is a 10-year road project, the GDE, which is still incomplete, and public art around the city, often by the roads where daily bottlenecks are occurring.
Ten years ago the budget featured expenditure of $2,030 million. Now, in 2011-12, the budget will see expenditure of $4,098 million. What extra services are we getting for this money? Where is the infrastructure to help justify the increase? Even with CPI taken into account, the $2,030 million would translate to about $2,650 million. That still leaves $1,400 million, or $1.4 billion, per year above inflation that this government spends above the levels of 10 years ago. This government has been ill-disciplined and selfish when it comes to spending other people’s money.
I will now turn my commentary to my shadow portfolio areas of urban services, transport services, housing, heritage and youth.
For years, ACTION has been underperforming and charging the taxpayer too much for it. In this year’s budget, we see further creep in the cost of running the service which less than 10 per cent of Canberrans use.
Not only did ACTION blow their budget of $111.8 million out to $114.4 million; they lost 26 per cent of their budgeted revenue from non-government user charges—that is, paying passengers. Can you imagine if a business lost 26 per cent of their revenue base from their customers? If the business survived—and that is a big “if”—there would have to be major changes and the decisions would be scrutinised to a considerable degree. Instead, at ACTION, where the government has created a culture
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