Page 1661 - Week 08 - Thursday, 28 September 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
allocation of loans under global new money borrowing limits imposed by the Commonwealth at this year's Premiers Conference. Budget paper No. 2, page 59, says:
The ACT Government intends to limit its borrowings to $28.7m, which is 27 per cent less than the approved global limit.
This is extremely dangerous, because as soon as the Commonwealth sees that the ACT does not need such a global allocation it will withdraw it. The allocation has already been slashed at the Premiers Conference from $50m and this was easily the lowest per capita in Australia, some half of Tasmania's borrowings per capita and about one-third that of the Northern Territory.
It would be far better to borrow this extremely small amount of funds to help to retain the economy's capacity to meet the needs of the community in very difficult economic circumstances, and certainly not to give another opportunity to the Commonwealth to slash ACT funds as it did by repudiating its real terms guarantee at the Premiers Conference. The impact on future budgets of servicing this sum is negligible but the need for the funds now is extremely great.
A point should be made about the budget papers. The Government and its Administration are to be congratulated on the improvement in the papers from last year. These papers are developing into a good set of economic documents. However, compared with the steps that the other States have taken, we still have a long way to go. Aggregate expenditure is difficult to obtain from the papers and to compare with the previous year, the initial statement and the forward estimates. Various categories of capital expenditure have no comparable previous year's figures to indicate a trend.
Crucially there is no estimate of gross State product, as in some State budget papers such as those of Queensland, and therefore no information on what the expected level of private investment will be. There is little discussion of the impact of the Commonwealth budget on the ACT and no quantification of the likely rate of economic growth, apart from population and work force growth estimates.
Very importantly, in terms of monitoring the Government's estimates, there is no commitment to releasing ongoing information on government expenditure and revenue against the budget forecasts. I suggest that this could be done in the Government's excellent publication, the ACT Economic Report, which is published quarterly.
All in all, Mr Speaker, my party basically has three beliefs about this budget and its policies. To copy national economic policies is grossly irresponsible. To ignore the present realities and act as though the ACT will again ride the storm as it has in the past is a gross
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .