Page 136 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 11 February 2015
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However, discounting the funding for Mr Fluffy, the deficit is roughly $385.9 million and that is a seven per cent increase from the deficit identified in the 2013-14 budget review. And we all know, again, if you take Mr Fluffy out, the deficit has grown by $53 million. And this is so typical of Labor governments; it is so typical of this Treasurer.
When we look at debt, when Mr Barr became Treasurer in 2011 the actual net debt was a healthy $473 million. The 2014-15 budget review marks the first time when net debt has been adjusted above the net debt in the original budget, a new low-water mark for this Treasurer. And the territory’s net debt position has been deteriorating year on year due to increased borrowings and, despite constant questions about how will it be paid back and when will it be paid back, all we see in the charts—and members only have to look at the chart in budget paper 3 this year—is that the debt is growing and growing. All we have, on page 294, is total external territory borrowings made up of the GGS and the PTEs on a very steep climb and in 2017-18 passing the $4½ billion mark. That is this Treasurer’s work. As I said, the territory’s net debt budget position has been deteriorating year on year and since the 2011-12 budget review through to the 2014-15 review there has been a variance of about 436 per cent, an amazing achievement.
When the Treasurer took over in 2011, other borrowings were at $1.9 million. Since then these borrowings have increased by a variance of 71 per cent. And the general government interest expenses since Mr Barr became Treasurer have done the same thing. They have just continued to climb. When Mr Barr took over as Treasurer the interest expense was about $95 million. Since then it has grown to $170 million a year, up by about 78 per cent.
You do have to ask: is it sustainable? And you do have to ask: what is the Treasurer’s answer to all of this? The answer to sustainability is no, it is not sustainable to have this growth in borrowings and it is not sustainable to have this growth in interest payments. Our debt to equity ratio is still strong, but the problem is that there seems to be no escape from the way this government spends. And, at the end of the day, the problem that we have is the expenditure of this government.
What is the Chief Minister’s answer? You only need to go to page 42 of budget paper 3 this year where he says that the temporary deficits over the next three years reflect the government’s investment in jobs and services—temporary deficits. The Treasurer believes that this will simply go away, because they are temporary. But with the same illusion as Wayne Swan gave to the federal parliament and to the people of Australia as a whole, this Treasurer is now simply saying, “It is coming. It will come and we will fix it.”
But we know that it was meant to be in 2015-16; then it was 2016-17. Now it is 2017-18. Year on year the surpluses elude this government and they slide further and further into debt. And it is because we have got an eyes-closed, fingers-crossed, temporary deficit sort of mentality from this Treasurer and now Chief Minister that we have this problem. We know that he had his eyes closed and his fingers crossed and hoped it would all go away when Kevin Rudd’s budget slashed 14,457 jobs from the commonwealth public service, the majority of which were going to be in this city.
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