Page 3215 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 September 1993
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Let us have a look at what is going to happen in a few years in Canberra. When the Federal Government funding, the special funding, cuts off or diminishes - and who knows how soon that will be, as the Federal Government has already shown it cannot be trusted with its promises - we will have to either find more money or make drastic cuts. We should not wait until that time. We should take due planning; we should run a surplus budget. There is a far better case to run a surplus budget than a deficit budget.
What has happened? Now we are down the rocky road, and we are running a deficit budget. What is happening in clear terms is that the ACT is now using the Bankcard to pay for the groceries. What would a prudent financial manager ask before the money was borrowed? He would ask: "What exactly are you going to borrow it for? How soon can you repay it? Where are you going to get the money to repay the principal, let alone the interest?". It is a nonsense; it is an absolutely ridiculous thing to do. There were minor borrowings buried in various places in previous budgets, but this is just a jump over the cliff.
When we look at something that could have made a difference - business - what has the ACT Assembly, or the Labor Party specifically, done in this area? Once again I quote from my reply to the budget statement in September 1989:
The money that comes into the ACT will come from two areas basically - obviously the ongoing grants from the Federal Government ... and the small business sector. We all acknowledge that the small business sector needs to be encouraged, but where is the encouragement of small business in this budget?
That was the 1989 budget, and I can repeat exactly the same words in relation to this budget. It is not necessarily that we need to do something for small business. It would be an advantage in a lot of cases if we stopped doing things to them and let them get on to produce and create jobs. Government does not create jobs; it used to once, but it is rare these days. They might give more people a piece of paper that says that they have another little qualification, but it is the small business sector that will create jobs. It will not be done by any government in this Territory, I will bet you.
What has the Government done? This morning I spoke to someone in the rural sector in the ACT. That is a small business sector. What did they say? They said that they have an old truck. They use it on the farm and they transport some cattle. Over the last 10 years they have run up 25,000 kilometres only, or 2,500 kilometres a year. That is not much. They do not use it to take the family out, I can assure you. It is just for cattle now and again, and a couple of other things on the farm. So what happens under this budget? They get their fuel price and the price of diesel increased. They said, "There is nothing to promote people staying in business". In their case, interestingly enough, they have only just reregistered the truck. It had been out of registration for some time because they simply could not afford it. At least they got in before the costs were even greater.
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