Page 3015 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 5 December 1989
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cannot abdicate its responsibilities and expect others to manage its problems and make the decisions for it. The Chief Minister, as the head of the Government and as the Treasurer, should have tackled the Territory's economic future with conviction, courage and vision. Mr Speaker, she has failed. The Government has denied all responsibility for its failure and has abdicated its role of policy maker.
We do not have the luxury of time in the ACT, Mr Speaker, and we do not have the luxury of assured funding in perpetuity. What we have is quite the opposite. The ACT has suffered as a result of the Government's short-sightedness and indecision. The Chief Minister spoke of adjustments over a period of years. Chief Minister, we do not have years. The Commonwealth's response to our situation gives little encouragement to the view that it will continue to fund Canberrans at a higher level than other Australians beyond the 1990-91 fiscal year.
Instead of projecting an image of purposeful progress, by which to reassure both the private sector and the public sector that this Government is in control, it has shown hesitancy, doubt and a lack of conviction that even it knew what was going on. It is no secret, Mr Speaker, that the guarantees of Commonwealth funding for the ACT expire in 18 months and that we have been overfunded in the past perhaps, in today's dollar terms, by as much as $135m a year. The Government seems to have been incapable of understanding that we will need to adjust our finances considerably, to adjust our expenditures and to bring them into line with what we can afford after that expiry date.
The $50m budget surplus for the 1989-90 fiscal year, which was predicted by the current Chief Minister during the election campaign, has failed to materialise. What we have seen is this Government going timidly to the Federal Government to ask for $295m to cover its embarrassment. Despite the validity of the request, which I concede, Messrs Hawke and Keating have shown no willingness whatsoever even to address it. This issue should have been pursued vigorously, Mr Speaker; it was not.
The Chief Minister continued to show a total inability or unwillingness to tackle the real issues, an approach which will only compound the problem for 1990-91 and for future budgets. Where change was contemplated, the Chief Minister misrepresented some elements of the financial situation - for example, public borrowing. The Government claimed in its budget papers that it had taken "a significant decision" to cut its future recurrent expenditure by deciding to reduce its borrowings by $10.8m.
Mr Speaker, this simply was not the case. The $10.8m reduced borrowings was illusory and involved no hard decisions whatsoever by the Government. Of the $10.8m, $5.8m referred to in the initial budget statement of 25 July was simply unallocated borrowings - that is, unused
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