Page 1037 - Week 04 - Thursday, 18 June 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
customer results where there is an effective partnership between the public and private sectors, and in some cases community organisations, and where the balance between them is right. It is the role of government to achieve that.
I would like now to address the elements of the budget strategy specifically identified by Ms Follett on Tuesday. The first two of these are a balanced recurrent budget and limited borrowings. The nature and magnitude of the budget gap need to be put into some perspective. A $73m shortfall currently acknowledged consists, we are told, of $55m capital and $18m recurrent. The forward estimates suggest that the $55m capital gap could be affected by the transfer of some $20m or so from the recurrent budget to the capital budget, as has been done in previous years. Of course, some of your capital budget should be funded from recurrent receipts when you have some left over. However, the Chief Minister has said that the estimates of last December have been overtaken by events, and perhaps the relationship between the recurrent and capital budgets may have been overtaken by events too.
If this projected transfer of funds between the recurrent and capital budgets does take place, then the necessity for borrowing for the capital budget could be as low as $35m. If the transfer is no longer intended, the pressure in balancing the recurrent budget is somewhat relieved, but the full $55m for the capital budget, or the greater part of it, will need to be borrowed. Of course, some action in between those two extremes is the most likely outcome. It should be noted that the recurrent budget gap of $5.7m in the December forward estimates has now risen to about $18m and significant reductions in expenditure and/or new or increased taxes will be needed to address that problem. Whatever the level of borrowing ultimately forced upon the Government for the capital budget, it can clearly be accommodated within the $71m global approval from the Loan Council, but the decision will rest more on the capacity to repay the borrowing and an acceptable level of total debt. Of course, the global approval level and the possession of a AA+ credit rating are somewhat academic under those circumstances.
On the capital program, I refer briefly to the statement tabled recently by Mr Berry on youth employment. I notice that the Chief Minister is claiming, "We are particularly pleased to propose a 1992-93 capital works increase of some $17m, or 13 per cent, compared to this year". If she had compared it to last year, it would still reflect a reduction against last year's capital works program, despite the 13 per cent this year, because there was a major reduction in the capital works program put in place by the Government this year. So there is not too much to crow about in the fact that the capital works program for next year will be less than it was a year ago. It needs to be put into some sort of perspective.
The third point raised by Ms Follett was the question of efficiency gains. She talked of structural reform and producing better services with fewer resources, but I have yet to see Ms Follett's proposals for achieving these outcomes. Again, more platitudes but no substance. Some structural reforms initiated by the Liberals when we were in government, the main plank of which was the corporatising of operations such as ACTEW, have been shelved by Labor. Labor has made no new moves to restructure the public service and has identified no specific intentions to do so. Ms Follett should have used her statement at least to indicate how she would restructure the public service so that she could deliver hard results in the budget.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .