Page 2042 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 June 1993
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The Government's desperation is reflected not only in this Bill or in its ad hoc approach to the revenue and expenditure solution for 1993-94. It comes out clearly in the presentation speech made by Ms Follett, which speech has been described by some journalists already as a mini-budget. Whether it is a mini-budget or not, I do not know. It is certainly a speech reeking of ambivalence. It is a very timid mini-budget, if indeed it is one at all. It is a Clayton's budget strategy statement. It is a plaintive plea to the Commonwealth for help. It is a "blame everyone else" document for a budget dilemma which is in fact of the Government's own making. It is a weak attempt to prepare the community for a budget which means higher taxes and lower standards of service delivery for them, but without actually explaining why.
It is a timid mini-budget, Madam Speaker, because - like Ms Follett's preceding budgets - it simply avoids mention of the significant changes that must be made in the way government is carried on in the ACT. After two years of Labor, the number of ACT Government Service employees has increased from 21,000 to 23,000. But what is Ms Follett intending to do to reduce the huge payroll costs and overheads incurred by this increasing number of employees? It is evident that Ms Follett remains incapable of making major decisions about the structure of government and about the number of people on the ACT Government Service payroll, and she persists in her nip and tuck approach, which she defined as the basis of budgeting about three years ago. The nip and tuck approach did not work three years ago, it did not work two years ago, it did not work last year and it will not work this year. Ms Follett simply has to lift her game and look at the big picture rather than at a conglomeration of minor ones.
As I said, it is a Clayton's budget strategy. Ms Follett is clearly bereft of ideas on, or solutions to, her budget dilemma. She is in such a blue funk that she has been unable even to produce the budget strategy statement that the community has come to expect. The best she can do is to restate what she describes as the key elements of her 1992 strategy, which in itself was no strategy but merely a restatement of long established budgeting principles, and I quote them - a balanced recurrent budget, minimising borrowings, increasing revenue collections and achieving expenditure reductions. Those principles, she states, are her budget strategy. They are not a budget strategy. I repeat that they are simply principles of good budgeting. Some strategy indeed! But where are the necessary courses of action to achieve these objectives articulated? Where does Ms Follett tell us, even in imprecise terms, what the community can expect in terms of changes in types and levels of service to be provided and where reductions in expenditure are likely to occur? None of them are identified. She uses all the platitudes, but she does not say anything that is positive or that you can put your finger on.
Madam Speaker, it is an attempt to blame everyone else for Ms Follett's own budget dilemma. It is the fault of the big bad Grants Commission, which has the temerity to point out yet again that we in the ACT spend a great deal more than any other community can afford on such government services as health and education. It is the Commonwealth's fault because they will not see what a disadvantaged place Canberra is and give us special consideration accordingly. It is the fault of the Premiers Conference because States - such as Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia - struggling with devastated economies, will not see how badly off we are compared to them. One could ask, of course, which political party put those States in their present economic situations.
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