Page 236 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 May 1992
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Madam Speaker, Ms Follett should have entered the conference yesterday with two major objectives in mind, bearing in mind the purpose of the Special Premiers Conferences. The first is to secure a fair financial deal for the ACT, a fair financial deal in terms of reducing this so-called vertical fiscal imbalance that has been in place for years. Secondly, she should have come out yesterday with a program of infrastructural change and micro-economic reform which would result in lower cost, lower taxing, and more efficient government for the ACT. That is what she should have gone there for. But she said that she was not going to go and heavy her Federal mates; that it was unreasonable to heavy them.
What in fact did she achieve, Madam Speaker? Clearly, high taxing, high spending government is here to stay. It is here to stay at the Federal level where their own current estimate is for a $9.3 billion deficit for this year - a 40 per cent increase on the Treasury estimate. That is only an estimate today. Wait till the next couple of months are over and see what it blows out to. The Federal Government is guilty of mismanagement in the extreme. It has grossly overestimated its tax revenues. What is the Commonwealth's response to this situation? It is merely to continue to implement initiatives from its One Nation package - the seven nation package, a package that gives Canberra absolutely nothing.
The Chief Minister went to the conference yesterday with her cap in hand and she walked away with nothing. The Prime Minister, after yesterday's meeting, says that he is now prepared to talk about State funding levels. That is what the Special Premiers Conference was convened in December 1990 to talk about. Eighteen months later the Prime Minister, out of the goodness of his heart, says that he is now prepared to talk about it. How marvellous! He has given no firm indication of when he intends to talk about it. Given that it has been the major item on the agenda since December 1990, such a statement is breathtaking in its audacity. We clearly should not hold our breath, but Ms Follett says that she is pleased with the outcome. Well, she might be, but nobody else is.
We still have absolutely no indication of what will happen to the ACT's transitional funding. Ms Follett said yesterday that health funds were high on her agenda. When she left yesterday morning she told Matt Abraham, "Health funds are high on the agenda". Well, she got her answer on health funds all right. She was told to increase day surgery; that is the solution. She was told: "Do not ask us for any more money; we are not going to give you any. Fix your day surgery and the problem is resolved". We also had the Chief Minister quoted in the Canberra Times today as saying:
We will be looking to the Grants Commission's assessment of our relativities and our special needs and we will be making that argument (in June).
I would suggest that, if she did not know what the relativities were before she went to the Premiers Conference yesterday, she really need not have bothered going at all, because that is the basis of any further discussions on our behalf. She simply wasted her chair at the conference, given that on the Matt Abraham program yesterday morning she said:
As far as Canberra goes, I ... want to get an assurance on the certainty of our funding and on the capacity for growth on our funding from the Commonwealth.
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