Page 2857 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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Until that report is released, we do not know all of the reasons. We do not know all of the reasons why the community had to experience what it experienced. The government talks about why it had to make savings when in fact it was getting more money than ever. It was getting money coming in much faster than inflation, and it has continued to do so. Yet in the midst of all of this we have been getting fewer and fewer services in real terms.
Does anyone think that in the last few years, as a result of these reforms, we have seen people’s real taxes go down? No, they have not; they have gone up. If we were delivering things more efficiently, you would expect that people’s taxes in the ACT would be going down. In fact, on a per capita basis in particular we would expect that every family would be paying a little bit less, because the government said, “We are going to deliver things more efficiently.”
That is what this is about. It is about efficiencies. Where are those efficiencies? If that was actually the case, we would see tax cuts. But we have not seen tax cuts. We have seen the opposite. We have seen tax per capita going through the roof. We have seen every family paying thousands of dollars more in real terms than they were paying at the beginning of the term of this government.
Was it just a cash grab or was it a drive for efficiency? We do not know. We do not know because it remains secret. Does anyone in the community believe that since 2006, or since 2001, the delivery of major projects has been better, they have seen an improvement in their infrastructure or they have seen that infrastructure delivered in a timely, efficient and cost-effective manner? No. We have seen the ongoing debacle that is the GDE. We have seen the Cotter Dam in that time. The government still cannot deliver infrastructure properly. Does anyone believe that housing has become more affordable? Has housing become more affordable? Housing has become less affordable in that time. These are all key measures.
If the purpose of this review was to make things better, to make things more efficient—they are not more efficient, because we all have to pay a lot more tax. Despite our paying more tax, they are delivering bigger deficits. So they are not being efficient at any end. Despite paying all of this extra tax and then delivering deficits, so spending more than ever, our health system has got worse. We now have the longest waiting times in the country. On all of these key measures things have got worse, not better.
Having suffered the effects of the extra taxes, the cuts in services and the broken promises, it is reasonable now, some years later, to say, “Why don’t you share this with the community so that some of what you said at the time, and you have been saying since, can be tested objectively?” Did this report really say that you needed to do all these things or did you just use it as an excuse to pursue the agenda you wanted to pursue? Did you just use it as an excuse to raise a lot more taxes?
And what else did it say that you have not told us about? Mr Costello is a very bright, capable man. I am sure that he would have been putting out some ideas about how they could maybe cut taxes. I would not be surprised if he actually said, “Maybe you
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