The ACT Budget put looking after mates before good financial management, the Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, told the Assembly yesterday.
She called for smarter thinking in the public sector as was happening elsewhere in Australia. She said, however, that Labor was too scared to take on the unions to create more efficient government. The inefficiency and looking after mates were affecting Canberrans’ standard of living.
“”To the majority of Canberrans, this budget represents all that was odious about self-government,” she said. “”The fears of the people in 1989, of ending up with an inefficient government that continues to cost more and more, with no direction, and without the guts to make the hard decisions, is exactly what the people have got.”
The budget was about more spending, more taxes, more borrowing and more tinkering at the edges.
“”It is about avoiding the tough decisions, in case someone is offended (the union mates) _ even if in the long term we are all worse off,” she said.
Mr and Mrs Tuggeranong, Mr and Mrs Belconnen, Mr and Mrs Gungahlin were the ones Labor had failed.
Labor had no mandate to increase the fuel franchise fee.
“”I give clear notice that the Liberal Party has no choice but to oppose this insidious rise in fuel franchise fee and that we will vote against it in the Assembly by way of disallowing the regulation,” she said.
However, Independents Michael Moore and Helen Szuty have promised to pass Labor’s money Bills so the measure is guaranteed passage in the Assembly.
Ms Carnell said that the $1 million from the extra tax could have been raised in other fairer ways _ changing the siting of the hospice to Calvary Hospital would save that much.
The Government could have done much to reform ACTION, but was too scared to take on the unions.
Ms Carnell condemned the voluntary separation scheme.
It was voluntary and untargeted because to do otherwise would have required a decision and some vision.
She condemned the extra $5 million take from ACT Electricity and Water.
“”Every ACTEW account is tax for the government,” she said.
Taxes, charges and petrol would go up, but wages would not go up enough to cover the increases. The Government was raising $49.7 million more in taxes and charges and is spending $56 million more.
“”That means that as fast as they raise extra revenue they spend it and at the same time have not addressed the $77 million funding shortfall from the Federal Government,” she said. “”This year the Follett government will borrow $34.4 million which will increase to $57 million each year for the next three years. On Ms Follett’s own estimates the ACT will have an extra $200 million debt in four years’ time.
“Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want – and their kids pay for it”.
The Government had based its health budget on not having any more patients than now. With an aging and growing population this could only mean longer waiting queues.
The Budget had not funds for a cardiothoracic unit. One Canberra patient a day had to go to Sydney for by-pass surgery.
“”The youth budget statement includes quite a few kits, videos and the like to be produced for various reasons, yet there is nothing in the way of concrete programs to create real employment or address the long term problems which face young people,” she said. “”The women’s budget statement, like the youth statement, consists of 153 pages of bumf and waffle.”
Rather than sack teachers the Government should address the cost of non-teaching staff and look at ways of fairly increasing the face-to-face teaching hours for current staff, she said.
“”The rest of the world is devolving, de-centralising, commercialising, corporatising, privatising, and producing the results,” she said. “”Not so the ACT, which must be the last Stalinist outpost in the world, where we centralise and we de-corporatise. We have seen ideology set in concrete, flying in the face of commonsense. . . .Here in the ACT, we’re trapped in “Jurassic Park’ with a Government that hangs on to obsolete and ineffective budget strategy.”
The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, said Ms Carnell had proposed no credible alternatives.
She had attacked the education cuts, yet the Liberals wanted to close more schools. She had erred in suggesting the abolition of diesel-fuel concessions would include heating oil.
She attacked the Opposition’s finance “”expert” Trevor Kaine for misunderstanding new Budget arrangements on health.
When given a chance to offer an alternative, the Opposition had failed.