Page 3349 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 17 September 1991
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The keynote for this budget is increasing efficiency to protect our community's future. After two years of self-government it is time we got the fundamentals right. Unprecedented cutbacks in Commonwealth funding have forced this Territory to make a rapid adjustment to the realities of living within our means. In the three short months since my Government again took office, we have taken tough decisions to ensure that priority service delivery to the community will be protected. Every program allocation has been carefully scrutinised. We have made substantial progress towards achieving a leaner and more efficient bureaucracy.
We are not borrowing for this budget. We have kept increases in taxation to a minimum. In particular, we have avoided hurting the local business sector which has borne much of the brunt of the national recession. We have stood by our fundamental commitment to social justice and we have again opened up the budget to the views of the people of the ACT.
The 1991-92 budget is a realistic solution to the need to live within our means. My Government has produced a balanced recurrent budget which represents the soundest possible investment in the Territory's future.
Commonwealth Funding
No State or Territory has ever before faced a collapse in Commonwealth support of the magnitude that the ACT has this year. The ACT has been treated with unprecedented severity. It has not been given the same assistance for phasing in Grants Commission relativities which has been provided to other States and which continues to be provided to the Northern Territory some 13 years after self-government. Commonwealth general purpose and special assistance, which represents half of our total recurrent and capital income, has been cut by 8 per cent in real terms. This contrasts with maintenance of real terms funding to the States.
The reduction in Commonwealth funding to be imposed on the ACT in 1991-92 is even greater in per capita terms, given that the ACT's population growth is now higher than any State's. Leaving aside the $53m previously withheld by the Commonwealth, the reduction in the ACT's general revenue funding base is almost 20 per cent in real terms in a single year. This is the first time that the Commonwealth has failed to maintain its funding levels to a smaller State or Territory at least at the same money level as for the previous year.
Our treatment by the Commonwealth is even harder to bear when we consider the way in which the Commonwealth threw money at the ACT in the years immediately prior to self-government. There was little attempt to tackle the problems and efficient management of the Territory. The
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