Page 1466 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 1 May 1990
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While I am at this, I might just put into the record the second goal of this strategy. That is to produce a balanced recurrent budget, not just in our first or second years but in the longer term. Of course, that is something which the Opposition was in no way able to do. You only have to look at the fiasco of their budget figures. We know what a mess they were in.
The third goal, of course, is to minimise the Territory's borrowings. I think everyone agrees that governments throughout the country and throughout the world have overexposed themselves to borrowing and I think that is a very sensible suggestion. Has anyone in the Opposition in discussing this Territory budget strategy statement criticised that objective? The answer, of course, is no.
These are the four goals that we are trying to achieve in this strategy statement. The fourth goal is to make full use of the capital assets that have been transferred to us, not, of course, to be namby-pamby and say, "We have got these community assets and people might like to use them for two afternoons a week, so we will not worry about whether they are totally under-utilised or whether there is only 15 per cent occupancy", et cetera. That, of course, is another goal that people on that side of the house cannot object to at all.
Mr Speaker, I had actually prepared a speech for this debate tonight on the basis of what my department was doing in relation to trying to meet the needs of this budget strategy but my time, unfortunately, has been taken up in answering those pathetic accusations from the other side of the floor. I would like to do a broad rundown of what my department is doing in its approach to the budget strategy statement brought down by the Chief Minister, which, of course, is the goal of this Government.
There is no doubt about the fact that my department provides many services that are taken for granted here in the ACT. They are only missed when there is a difficulty in delivering them or when there is some impact personally. We do, however, need to pay attention to the cost of these services within the budget. We are reviewing the methodology of charging services to both municipal and territorial budgets. This is a thing which the Labor Party was incapable of doing. We were left with a terrific hotchpotch of figures from their budget statements last year which you need to be a Rhodes scholar to understand half the time.
Mr Speaker, it is important to ensure that services are delivered on an effective basis and that we achieve value for money and rates are set at a level to recover the costs of providing the services we see as important. My department provides services to all other government agencies as well. We provide common services such as vehicle fleet operations, purchasing, tendering, personnel and accounting arrangements. We have undertaken a review
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