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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 2182 ..
MR WHITECROSS (continuing):
Mr Speaker, far from being a model of sound financial management, at best
you would have to say that it was more of the same in the financial management
stakes, and at worst you would have to say that it is worse because not only is
the direct amount of borrowings greater but she also is increasing the amount
of unfunded liabilities by not fully funding things like superannuation.
The second claim Mrs Carnell made for her budget was that it delivers improved services while reducing costs. She says that over the next three years Canberrans will get more services, including from Health, and Health, in real terms, will spend less. We have seen already in the first quarter how true that claim is. We have seen, in a range of areas highlighted by the Estimates Committee, how services are not getting better, are not improving; they are getting worse. Mrs Carnell boasted in her budget speech about a $12m cut to the ACTION budget, and already we are seeing proposals to reduce the number of services provided by ACTION, to make the services inferior, and to make the journey times longer. That is what we are seeing under the Carnell Government. That is the difference between the rhetoric of Mrs Carnell and the reality, which is reduced services.
Mr Speaker, the third claim that she makes is that they are committed to working closely with the private sector to achieve lasting growth. That is a noble ambition, on its own, but there is an interesting twist to this claim, this boast, by Mrs Carnell to be working closely with the private sector. She boasts about $10m extra for cooperation with the private sector, publicising Canberra and all that. We have seen the secret deals to give free land to assist businesses that Mrs Carnell is fond of. We have seen that sort of thing. The reality is that before this budget came down we had alarmist rhetoric from Mrs Carnell about deficits, about going down the drain, about the parlous futures of our children and our children's children, in order to justify cuts in libraries, cuts in ACTION, cuts in education, and cuts in community services; yet money can be found to assist the business community. Here we have the reality of Liberal government. The reality of Liberal government is that financial management is used as an excuse to justify cuts to the community sector and cuts to community services while still finding money for the business sector.
The fourth claim by Mrs Carnell is that she is delivering a three-year budget and that in some way this is different from what has gone before. The Estimates Committee's scrutiny demolished that pretty comprehensively. The Office of Financial Management admitted that this was just forward estimates with out-turn prices. We simply do not have anything new. What we do have, Mr Speaker, is the reality of the three-year budget. We have accommodation expenses. There is no out-turning of the prices for accommodation expenses. The failure to out-turn the prices for accommodation expenses will mean that in the next financial year there will be a gap of $900,000. In the year after that there will be a gap of $1.7m and in the year after that a gap of $2.6m because of the failure to out-turn accommodation costs. So the budget already understates the real state of expenditure compared to what it would be if they had out-turned accommodation costs.
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