Page 2184 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 2 August 2022
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significantly invest in tackling climate change, in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, in improving our waterways, in investing in biodiversity protection and in tackling invasive weed species. These are the choices that we have made in the budget. We have been very transparent about that, and I think that is appropriate.
I pick up on the Chief Minister’s point. If Ms Lee does not think that these expenditure choices are appropriate then she should say so. My lived experience of being in this place is that, in almost every sitting week—in fact, probably almost in every week, but certainly in the sitting weeks—we get a couple of motions in here from the Liberal Party calling for more expenditure on certain things. That is fair enough; that is a policy position that you are allowed to put. But every week the government is urged to spend more money—and probably in other weeks as well, in the various press releases and online video clips that Liberal members put on their social media pages and the like.
The other point that it is important to reflect on in this debate is that the Greens do not endorse a blinkered focus on deficit and surplus. It is a concern that, in this challenging environment we are living in, with so many issues in the budget and the community that we need to address, Ms Lee is particularly focused on some artificial number around surplus or deficit. The apparently magical surplus milestone is routinely used in a political way. A surplus must be good and a deficit must be bad. That is the traditional analysis that we get. I do not know whether “analysis” is the right word; it is the traditional ideology that we get from the Liberal Party. If a government budget is in deficit, it must be a failure. Of course, deficit sounds bad; so it is an easier way for the opposition to attack a government.
That is narrow and dangerous thinking that ignores the fact that budgets must reflect the needs of the community, to respond to the challenges that we are facing and invest for the future. I do not support a narrow fiscal lens that just sees the budget as a ledger of numbers and, if it does not achieve a surplus, it must be a failure. There are times when you need to invest in the community and make sure that we are preparing to deal with the current challenges and prepare for the future.
Do not get me wrong. You cannot just put it all on the credit card all of the time, but we are battling through a pandemic and we are facing a housing crisis. We are responding to the growing consequences of climate change, and spending on these issues, including the prudent use of the government’s borrowing power, is an option for a responsible government.
It does not mean that we are proposing flagrant or careless spending, but we should not over-dramatize a deficit as if it is a poisonous failure. Governments can borrow at low interest rates, and they can use these borrowings to grow the productivity of the economy, invest in our people and build skills. These are all things that government has a job to do and can deliver through the budget.
The comments made by the Chief Minister about the Liberal Party seeking to outsource their policies was an angle that I had not reflected on, but I think that adds to our conviction that we will not be supporting this motion today. To pick up Ms Lee’s theme of transparency, we believe there are a significant number of mechanisms already in place, and that the estimates process and various others will
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