Page 2470 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 1993
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MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (3.33): Madam Speaker, I intend, notwithstanding what Mr Kaine has said, to address my remarks to the Federal budget.
Mrs Carnell: It should be short.
Mr Humphries: Focus on the positives and it will be.
MS FOLLETT: I would be grateful if members would extend some courtesy while I am speaking. The 1993-94 Commonwealth budget has been brought down in a national economic context, which of course impacts on all State and Territory government budgets. The economy is still heavily influenced by the effects of the national recession. Unemployment levels, I am sure all members would agree, are at unsustainable and unacceptable levels, and international economic growth continues to be slow compared to Australia's own economic performance.
The Commonwealth budget has also been brought down against a context of agreement by all Australian governments, of whatever persuasion, at the last Premiers Conference on the national fiscal outlook, including the need to improve Australia's national savings. The ACT faces the added task of managing an unprecedented rate of transition in its own finances. Against this background, the ACT welcomes the priority that has been given in this budget to expanding employment opportunities and to meeting high priority social needs.
Before considering the impact of the Commonwealth's budget in detail, I think it would be appropriate to consider just briefly what is not included in the budget. Mr Kaine made much of waving around newspapers. I would like to wave around a part of a newspaper with Mrs Carnell's smiling face included in it. Contrary to the speculation by the Leader of the Opposition, the wholesale sales tax regime in the Federal budget has not been extended to ACT Government activities or to municipal components of our activities. I understand that Mrs Carnell has been reported as claiming that this could add $15m to ACT costs. She has also questioned whether the ACT Government had taken this into account in formulating our own 1993-94 budget. I can certainly reassure the Assembly on all counts. The Government has not allowed what has proven to be, yet again, ill-informed speculation by the Leader of the Opposition to be a diversion from the difficult task of preparing our 1993 budget.
Similarly, there is not in the Commonwealth budget the additional cutback in Commonwealth funding to the States and Territories that was promised in the Federal Opposition's Fightback package, which the then Leader of the Opposition actually endorsed. Mr Kaine endorsed that, so he is probably disappointed that it is not in the Federal budget. Nor is there, in this Federal budget, the across-the-board tax on all goods and services which was promoted by the coalition parties. Members' memories seem exceptionally short, so I will remind them that the rate of that goods and services tax was 15 per cent - an almighty impost on every Canberra household.
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