Page 1662 - Week 08 - Thursday, 28 September 1989
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misunderstanding of the current and future situation and an abrogation of government. To accept the budget legacies of the ACT as if we were still a department of the Commonwealth, with a little embroidery, is tantamount to fiddling while Rome burns.
This budget and its strategy is really the worst possible response to the current economic conditions. It is contractionary and it will lower economic activity. All in all, it is not a budget that I would have assumed would be put out by, of all things, a Labor government, but nevertheless it is Labor's budget. Whilst not happy with it, my party will not oppose the budget and I just hope that the forecasts that we have made do not actually come about, because I do not think the budget will do much about it if they do.
MR STEVENSON (4.09): Mr Speaker, this is a deficit budget. An injection of funds into the ACT economy would be similar to the injection of heroin: it feels great for a while, but sooner or later you have to come back to earth and look at the dire consequences of that action. Making the people of the future responsible for debts incurred in the present is the type of financial policy that has placed Australia and the States in their current debt situation. That same policy is like being hooked on heroin - you do not get off it. It is a never-ending debt treadmill.
In the ACT the people did not want self-government, basically because they were concerned about increased charges and taxes and with good reason, as the first budget proposal shows. What will happen is that budget borrowing will escalate, year after year after year, as it inevitably does. It is vital in the ACT, in a founding government, that we do not put this place and the people of Canberra into hock, into debt. It is essential that we keep in mind the logic of "you pay as you go". The idea of expenditure for capital works has been mooted, that it is perfectly okay to borrow for them, but who says the people of the future want to pay for the decisions of the present, which can be shown, and which have in the past been shown, to be the mistakes of the present?
The other major area that we need to look at in this Assembly is the proper allocation of economic responsibility for the Australian Capital Territory. And it is not called the Australian Capital Territory without good reason. This is the nation's capital. The majority of things that happen here and the planning and development that went on here to turn this into the national showcase were done because it is the capital.
The people of the ACT should not be expected to pay for these grandiose planning ideas. Let me give an example: the Y plan, which encouraged the spread-out development of Canberra. It may look great, it may be nice to live within, but it is not typical planning. It was done specifically for the nation's capital. The costs of this
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