Page 1647 - Week 08 - Thursday, 28 September 1989
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Bill can recommence in mid-November. This is an unbelievable and totally unacceptable sequence of events. It is noteworthy in this context that many worthwhile bodies such as Marymead Children's Centre, Barnardo's Homes and the Richmond Fellowship remain uncertain about their funding for this fiscal year. Presumably this uncertainty will continue until the budget process is completed. It looks like November, but presumably the Government does not care if it is in February or March.
If we allowed this to happen it would mean that the budget would not be passed until almost halfway through the financial year and any changes could have little, if any, effect on the budget for the balance of the financial year. That is another clear demonstration of the Treasurer's lack of appreciation of the problem. I can only interpret the Treasurer's actions as demonstrating a lack of confidence in her ability to produce an effective budget which she can defend. The approach appears to be: spread the decision responsibility and dilute the Treasurer's responsibility.
What then needs to be done, Mr Speaker? The task of delivering sound financial management to the ACT is not an easy one. However, it is exactly what we must have. Time is running out. The guaranteed transitional Commonwealth financial assistance to the ACT will soon cease. The time to make the hard decisions is now, not two years down the track. If we do not make these difficult decisions now it will only compound the problems and require even harder decisions next year and beyond. Rational decisions on reducing government expenditure need not necessarily affect the quality of services produced by the Government. The achievement of efficiency and effectiveness in the provision of services must be the prime consideration but duplication, redundancy and waste must be eliminated.
Education and health, which make up approximately half of the ACT's budget - that is, $500m approximately out of a $1.2 billion budget - are functions which the Commonwealth Grants Commission identified as those which contributed most to the Commonwealth overfunding of the ACT; in fact, of the order of some $51m in the year 1986-87. Because these two items account for nearly half of the total budget, it is obvious that they must be candidates for review in achieving savings. Inefficient administration, leading to excessive overhead costs, is a significant contributor to the overfunding. It is these excesses which need to be eliminated and not the direct delivery of services to the public. Nurses and teachers deliver the goods; bureaucrats in offices do not.
I must note at this point, however, that the Treasurer's statement yesterday, that the Liberal Party has called for draconian cuts to education and health with a reduction in both services and costs, is quite simply a fiction. Nice try, Rosemary, which no doubt went down well with your supporters. But the nurses and teachers will be continuing to ask you to defend your ill-directed cuts while you simply attempt to deflect criticism onto someone else.
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