Journalism and other writing
At a glance
Surplus $4.2m
Social capital program
Major refurbishment for Govt flats.
1700 blocks of land released
Canberra beautification program
$7000 for first-home buyers
$130m for road upgrades to unlock Gungahlin and Tuggeranong traffic jams.
$5.3m for cycleways over four years.
151 PS redundancies
Accelerated program to fund PS super
More police on the beat
GST fully passed on in govt charges
Brisbanites squealed when it was revealed that a sub-website of Virgin Airlines dared say that Brisbane was a dreary town. Well, Canberra cops it every day.
Canberra-bashing is a national sport while Queensland basks in the sunshine of Federal Government favouritism.
Or does it?
Well Tuesday’s Budget reveals something contrary to popular mythology. The ACT is doing very well from the Federal funding and Queensland is doing poorly.
It is exactly the opposite as in the early 1970s when then Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen blamed the evil Whitlam socialists in Canberra of cruelling Queensland while allowing Canberra fat cats to bask in cream. In fact, Joh had his hand out first of all the states to get the money from whatever social-engineering or quasi-nationalisation program the Whitlam Government had going.
So what has changed? The ACT got self-government not because of some outbreak of democratic spirit, but because the Feds wanted us to pay our own way and have someone else cop the blame. Remember the Whitlam Government lost one of the traditionally Labor ACT seats. The Hawke Government did not want the same thing to happen. The ACT was to be funded like a state. There were some transitional arrangements, but by 1993 the ACT had become part of what is called the Commonwealth Grants Commissions Relativities.
Continue reading “2000_05_may_act budget”