Page 628 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 4 July 1989
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It is appropriate that we now have a look at that issue because, as Mr Duby has rightly pointed out, one of the big difficulties with being granted self-government in the fashion that it came is that there has been no agreement between the Commonwealth and this community on financial matters. There have been some matters that have been determined unilaterally by the Commonwealth with Commonwealth public servants representing this community talking to other Commonwealth public servants and coming to some agreement about what the financial arrangements should have been.
We need some sort of a financial arrangement with the Commonwealth along the lines of what was agreed by the Northern Territory. I certainly do not expect to see any such agreement as that negotiated with the Northern Territory, and there are a number of reasons why that is not likely to occur. The first is that the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory was in place before the transition to self-government occurred. There were elected people who were able to negotiate on behalf of the residents of the Northern Territory as to what that financial agreement should have looked like. There was no such body in place here, and negotiations must now take place, after the event, to rectify the omissions of the Commonwealth in transferring self-government to us in the way that it did.
I would submit, Mr Speaker, that in the lead-up to this election the Liberal Party set down some basic principles that should govern the financial relationship between this community and the Commonwealth. I think that they are worth stating because I doubt that the Labor Party in government or any other party here could challenge the validity of these principles. I will read them; they are not very long. In general terms the first is: "The residents of the ACT should be in a position no different to taxpayers elsewhere in Australia in that they should expect to pay for services provided by government at a reasonable cost" - I believe that is a basic principle that cannot be argued; it does not matter whether you live in the ACT or Melbourne or Sydney or anywhere else - "to ensure that ACT residents and taxpayers are in no way disadvantaged financially by the granting of self-government". This, I repeat, is Liberal policy and it reads:
A liberal administration will be guided by the following principles; first, that costs and charges relating to the establishment and maintenance of the seat of government and the national capital shall be borne entirely by the Commonwealth; secondly, that residents of Canberra should not pay more for ACT works and services than is paid elsewhere for comparable services, nor should they be asked to pay for a higher standard of service than applies elsewhere, unless it is a local decision reflecting local public demand that the higher standard be provided; thirdly, that ACT
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