Page 2425 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
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as balanced but unadventurous and not addressing the need for restructuring to meet our future lower level of Commonwealth funding. Ian Davis from the Canberra Times called the budget cowardly, containing no monumentally bad decisions - in fact, containing virtually no decisions at all. He said that the budget fails to address future adjustments to reduced Commonwealth funding. There is a common thread there. Despite the Treasurer's claim that it is a caring and socially just budget, even Dr Tomlinson from ACTCOSS says that it does not go far enough.
These comments collectively condemn this dead-on-arrival budget. But the most critical assessment that can be made of a budget in a period of recession, presented by a government faced with the inescapability of major reform, is well deserved: It is a budget of wasted opportunities. The budget not only does nothing and wastes opportunities; I believe that it also runs a grave risk of not meeting even the lacklustre targets set by the Government for itself. The assumptions about receipts and revenues may well be too optimistic. The 2 per cent growth forecast for 1992-93 is modest and there are signs of recovery in the economy. But those signs are weak, and the ACT is not showing the same level of recovery as the rest of Australia.
There is some question, then, about whether that growth is assured. Reliance on last year's growth as an indicator is not reliable because the ACT's economic performance last year was supported by strong housing sector activity, which is showing signs of slower and uncertain growth for the major part of this year. The Treasurer's optimism about the falling rate of unemployment expressed in her budget speech is scarcely justified. It is an optimism that I for one do not share, and I do not think a lot of other people share it with her either.
The balanced recurrent budget with which Ms Follett is obsessed to the exclusion of all else will depend on the public sector restraining expenditure by an aggregate 2 per cent, and there is real doubt that this can be done. As an example, the Follett Government's own recurrent health expenditure last year exceeded budget estimates. The estimate was $211.7m; that is what was appropriated by this Assembly. The Government's own budget figures, released two days ago, show an actual expenditure of $222.3m; that is, an overexpenditure of $10.6m compared to what was appropriated a year ago. There can be no better expectation that expenditures will stay within the budget parameters this year. In government schooling expenditure, similarly, the estimate was $184.4m; the actual expenditure was $188.4m, or an overexpenditure of $4m. Their record in achieving their own budget control is not very good. It is noteworthy that there is no forecast of reductions in government school expenditures for this year, and only a one per cent reduction in health.
Without significant reductions in health and education expenditure, the budget outcome must be in doubt, since together they represent about 40 per cent of the recurrent budget. The business rules for the health program, for all practical purposes, guarantee additional funding for that program in 1992-93 simply for the asking, although one must ask why that is so. I remind the Assembly that on the Government's own figures, which I quoted a little while ago, some $10.6m more was spent in health last year than was originally budgeted. That expenditure is now built into the health budget base, before any other additions are made.
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