Page 3338 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
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that they do not want to do that. They do not want to stand up, and they do not want to defend that budget. I am not surprised. I would think that that says it all. They have as little confidence in the budget as they had some weeks ago in the Minister for Education. The first thing to be said about this budget is that they were given great assistance from the budget that was left to them by Rosemary Follett. I recall the Chief Minister saying there was $24m in surplus after that budget; so I think we should give some acknowledgment to that sound budget that was brought down last year by the Follett Government. Another aspect of that, of course, is that not every item in Rosemary Follett's budget was spent, and we see some of those circulating again this year. So, again, that is a compliment to the Follett budget, to the Follett Administration; this Alliance Government can see the sense, the good sense, of the proposals that were brought down just one year ago. So let us acknowledge the good starting point that this Government had in preparing its budget.
The second thing to be said about the budget is that it has come down in two parts. The first part came down some time ago but it has not been raised again in the last week or so. It was brought down early deliberately so that the people would forget it, and so that the budget would not appear as harsh as it really is. The first part of the budget was the list of increases in taxes and charges. There was a very substantial increase in a great variety of charges. In some cases they were at the level of the CPI; in other cases they were at a level higher than that. I recall, for example, that the general rate was increased not by the CPI of about 6 per cent but by 16.6 per cent, and that is an enormous amount of money. On my quick calculations here just a moment ago, that is something like $7m to $8m that the Canberra taxpayer has to fund. Why was that not part of the Chief Minister's speech just a week ago? Why did he not say, "We have been down this path of hitting the ACT taxpayer, but we regretted that we had to do it?" Why did he not remind the people that he had done that - $8m worth? That was part one of the budget.
In part two of the budget we come to further tax increases from this high taxing Government, and those better known, better remembered, such as a petrol tax that will bring in something like $8m this year. What a heavy imposition that is on ACT people. Do not forget that this is a city - now, regrettably, we can see - designed for the motor car, and, while we would wish to change it, we know we cannot. But an imposition on petrol tax is a very severe one to the ACT resident. That was just one of the extra charges from this very high-taxing Government, a Government that prefers to spend money in other ways.
It could have saved money. It could have avoided a lot of the expenditure that it did incur. We had the PRB, the Priorities Review Board, that I think cost something like $340,000. We have had just recently an application by this
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