Page 2168 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 May 2013
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The Canberra Business Council put out a commentary entitled “Another budget full of negatives for the ACT”. The Canberra Business Council is pretty diplomatic in its dealings with governments both at territory and federal levels, so for it to come out with a heading such as that is pretty telling. The commentary includes:
The reality is that there is very little in the 2013 Federal Budget to support jobs and growth in Canberra—on the contrary, the Budget flags a further cut to the Australian Public Service … of another 1200 jobs.
It is true that we live in an uncertain world. Over recent years ACT businesses have been constantly exposed to:
• reports of global economic uncertainty;
• political leadership instability;
• the uncertainty and indecision flowing from a seven-month “claytons” election campaign;
• increasing taxes and regulations;
• constant speculation about the magnitude of likely cuts to the public service …
• rising unemployment albeit of a low base.
Of those six dot points, just about all of them can be controlled by the federal government. Australia is a major player in the global economy but, of course, by no means can it be seen to be a dominant player, so there will be externalities, but there were externalities in previous administrations as well. There were externalities during the Howard government. Let us not forget the Asian financial crisis. What happened there? The federal government under John Howard had the only economy in the Asia region that grew throughout that period. That was not by chance; that was because of the then Liberal government’s ability to manage the books.
Quite a telling story is told in a chart produced by Sinclair Davidson and reported on the ABC. It says that the budget deficit for this financial year is $19.4 billion. The budget deficit for the coming financial year is $18 billion. But this is the particularly intrusive figure for taxpayers—Swan’s accumulated deficits to date are $191.7 billion. Going back to what I said earlier, if you have those kinds of deficits but you have something really substantial to show for it, people would be more accepting. But the fact is that so much of that has been squandered. And they are just the accumulated deficits; they are not actually the bulk of the budget. In contrast, Costello had accumulated surpluses of $97.4 billion. So there you have a clear contrast—one is Labor values and one is Liberal values. The Liberal values are living within our means. The Labor values are spending at all costs and leaving it for a future coalition government to pick up the scraps.
This Labor budget is one which the National Council for Single Mothers and their Children has described as completely devastating. Further:
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