Page 1152 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 22 August 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Government - our Chief Minister - has done and said nothing on this vital matter. It seems reluctant to offend or upset its Federal partners. The ACT taxpayer, Mr Speaker, must pay the price eventually if nothing is done about this.
I turn to the Federal capital works program - I should say, what remains of it - of which the Chief Minister made much. A notable exclusion from this 1989-90 Federal capital works budget is the promised National Museum of Australia. It has been promised for years, but I notice now that Ros Kelly, one of our Federal representatives, considers it to be a luxury. There are a lot of people who would not agree. Neither is there provision for refurbishment of the old Parliament House, which some of us have been expecting to occur for some time. The place will fall down before the Commonwealth finds money to refurbish it.
The Federal Government's capital works program for the ACT last year was some $200m. Its new works program for this year is projected to be only about $61m. It is difficult to tell what the actual expenditure in the ACT will be this year because, like our budget, this important information is omitted from the Commonwealth budget. It and our budget mention the capital works program only in terms of total capital cost. It does not tell how much is actually going to be spent. So it is one of the problems with our budget, and it equally applies to the Commonwealth budget. But I would submit, Mr Speaker, that with the falling off in the total program from last year to this year there must be a significant reduction, and it could possibly be as high as 50 per cent, compared with last year. I am talking about actual expenditure in the ACT, which is what counts for us.
The Chief Minister says that the expenditure on the Federal works program is to be of the order of $80m. She may be right. I do not know where she got it from; it is not in the budget. But that is irrelevant, largely, unless you know how it relates to what was spent last year. Is it a 50 per cent or a 100 per cent drop from last year? Unless we know that, it is meaningless. But to say that it is not going to have any effect on our budget and therefore we do not have to worry about it, when perhaps you do not even have the information, is quite wrong.
Such a dramatic reduction, if it were 50 per cent - I see no reason why it should not be - would be a cause for great concern in the ACT and reminiscent of the stop-start economy which the ACT thought it had left behind years ago. Clearly the ACT Government does not have the capacity to make up the shortfall. We are talking about our works program, but we obviously do not have any wherewithal to pick up any slack in the Commonwealth's program.
The effect on the ACT building and related industries and the consequential social impacts will be enormous. But the Chief Minister's response to this is merely to note that the Federal Government's capital works program in the ACT "compares well with the $200m committed last year" and that
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .