Page 2104 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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Madam Speaker, let us look, first of all, at the trend over the last four years. Let us compare the present budget with the Alliance Government's budget of 1990-91. Even if we were to assume that there had been no inflation in the four years since that budget and we examined the police budget in absolute dollar terms, the amount spent on police, in those last four years, has declined by $3.5m, or 6.4 per cent. That is since 1990-91 and it takes into account the changes in this year's budget. There has been a 6.4 per cent reduction while crime rates have been rising at at least five times that level over the same period. Taking into account the inflation which we have experienced, in real terms there has been a decline of approximately $13m in the police budget since 1990-91, a cut of 20 per cent.
Mr Connolly: But you are putting back only $1.1m, Gary.
MR HUMPHRIES: You have to take it a step at a time, Mr Connolly. It will take a long time to rectify the damage that your budgets have done to policing in this Territory, but this is the first step towards doing it. The Minister says that there has been an increase in this year's budget of $295,000. What he meant, of course, was that there is an increase in expenditure on new initiatives of $1.175m less 2 per cent untargeted savings amounting to $880,000. The difference between those two figures is $295,000 if you have a continuing base between last year and this year; but, of course, you do not. He does not explain the bottom line effect on the police budget. There was in last year's budget a twenty-seventh pay, which did account for $1.519m, or $1.319m if you take into account an overpayment from the previous year. So far, so good. But that still leaves at least $241,000 in cuts between last year's budget and this year's budget which remain unexplained by this Minister, as is the $295,000 so-called increase.
It is wrong of the Minister to say that one-off variations, or one-offs in last year's budget, account for that difference. They simply do not. In last year's budget, the 1993-94 budget, there were policy variations, as indicated in last year's budget papers - that is, total policy and parameter adjustments - of only $106,000. Well might you run away, Mr Connolly. Would you like to have this explained? The budget variation is $106,000, so where do we get an increase of $295,000? I think you owe the Assembly an explanation as to where you get this figure of $295,000. Until you provide it I will continue to maintain that there has been a real cut in policing in this Territory. That, I think, reflects the real position that we are going to face, and that we have faced over the last four years in this Territory.
I want, briefly, to comment on Mr Moore's remarks about the budget. I think that they were unfair. I do not think he has taken into account the fact that we have put on the table what we intend to do, which stands in stark contrast to the behaviour in the past of oppositions, I must admit, of both sides of the chamber. He calls benchmarking the lowest common denominator. I call benchmarking looking at the world's best practices, and putting in place those world's best practices to make sure that we have the best standard in the ACT.
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