Page 2347 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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It is a travesty that we have failed to diversify the economy here locally. I know I am going to sound like my colleague Mr Smyth in saying that, but he has been harping on about it for years and he is correct. We are still too reliant on federal public service employment. More incentive and more opportunity need to be extended to broaden the small business base in this territory. Until such time as that occurs, we are going to be held ransom to the movements in federal politics.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health, Minister for Higher Education and Minister for Regional Development) (4.54): I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important part of the budget debate. Budgets are always challenging documents to put together. You have to weigh up the investments you have to make, the additional expenditure that is urgent and required in a government that focuses very much on service delivery, along with things that you would like to do, commitments you have made to the people of Canberra, whether it be through election commitments or other decisions that have been taken, and balance them up with the resources available to deliver those at a time when the city is growing and unique challenges are being faced by the ACT economy.
This budget was a challenging one to put together. We have heard the Treasurer make comments on that. But the fundamentals of the decisions which underpin this budget are the right direction for Canberra. The budget does set out a vision that we have heard pooh-poohed by those opposite in the debate so far today. The vision is clearly there. We do have a desire to see Canberra grow and change and become an even better city to live in. We know that we are one of the world’s most liveable cities.
We have got a lot to be proud of already, but we want to see Canberra continue to be ranked as one of the most liveable cities in the world. That means we need to make continued investments to ensure that that is the case. These go to some of the signature projects which are outlined in this budget, whether they be capital metro, some of the changes we would like to see along the Northbourne corridor, some of the works that need to be done in the growing greenfield suburbs on the northern fringe of Canberra and the central parts of Canberra or some of the decisions we have taken to ensure that we see infill in an appropriate way across the city. It goes to projects like city to the lake and support that we are providing through the budget for projects like the Australia forum, when we have seen the commonwealth government completely leave the field.
People look to the ACT government for leadership. They wanted to see stability but progress in the 2014-15 ACT budget, and that is exactly what they got. Let us remember that this budget was finalised in the weeks following a pretty savage commonwealth budget in terms of the impact that it had on Canberra. Not only did we lose significant amounts of money that go to Canberra’s number one priority, which is health—and we had to rally around and look at how we were going to deal with that—but we saw Canberra’s economy take a hit in terms of confidence, with some of the decisions that the commonwealth made about job losses. Yet because our budget is in the strong position that it is in, we were able to ensure that we continued with our growth funding of health, which does remain Canberra’s number one priority. We were able to ensure that our commitments around education continue—that we invest in our city’s next generation of citizens that are coming up and ensure that they have a quality education regardless of what school they attend.
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