Page 2424 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
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deplete our reserves like this, and I suspect that we are just about at the bottom of the barrel. There cannot be too many reserve funds left. This Follett Labor Government has to acknowledge the facts of life: The reduction in Commonwealth funding demands major structural reform, and nipping and tucking year by year will not do it. We must meet the inevitability of a further reduction in Commonwealth funding of the order of $80m over the next four years - $20m a year for each of the next four years, on average - not by exhausting reserves but by effecting real change and by real consequential reductions in expenditure.
Sadly, the budget does not offer the ACT community any solutions to the deep and difficult problems we have to face sooner rather than later. The proposed reductions in public sector spending are non-specific. The Government has abdicated its responsibility, and the public service is left with the job of achieving the 2 per cent reduction determined by the Government as being necessary in recurrent spending by whatever means the public servants consider to be effective. The Government has abdicated its responsibility for delivering budget outcomes and it has abdicated responsibility for the results. It fails to provide leadership to the public service and to the ACT.
The Government fails to convey any sense of confidence that it is in control or has any idea about where we are going or why. In many departments there will be reductions as the professionals of the public service implement the Government's vague agenda to the best of their ability. I am compelled to ask why the public service should be made responsible. Why should they be forced to determine, for example, that perhaps 30 people should be axed from the Education Department or 50 from Health? That is a government responsibility, not a public service responsibility. The Government is responsible, and it should shoulder that responsibility and not try to shove it off onto its public servants. It must also accept responsibility for any failure to achieve results.
I have indicated my concern at the Government's reliance on spending our reserves to prop up a false and unsustainable level of activity and service delivery. Spending our savings denies us a return on the potential investment of that money. It delays the restructuring that is inevitable and essential. It gives a false sense of security about our ability to sustain our current levels of expenditure. Worse, it ignores the real need to stimulate private sector activity and diversity as the future source of jobs and government revenues.
The Government's approach in this budget has been presented clearly and can be seen for what it is. It is directionless, it is visionless, it is paralysed, and it is vulnerable. It has satisfied nobody. I will cite just a few comments. The Trades and Labour Council has recognised the budget as manageable but failing to create enough jobs to pull Canberra up by its bootstraps. That is from the Labor Party's supporters. The Housing Industry Association has said that the budget has failed to address market reality and will not address Canberra's future needs. The Canberra Business Council has said that the budget lacks leadership and takes no action to restructure in depth. It is a budget characterised by lost opportunities and lost savings. It is the budget of a big taxing, big spending government.
The Chamber of Commerce's view is that adjustments have been made at the margins but that major decisions have not been taken, and the chamber has specifically referred to problems in health, in education and in ACTION which are being ignored. Dr Chessell from Access Economics characterised the budget
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