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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 1836 ..

MR WHITECROSS: You can coach Mr De Domenico on this afterwards. Mr Speaker, we have seen very significant revenue problems. How will Mrs Carnell plug the budget problem that she had before Howard and Costello got into the act, and how much worse is that problem now that Howard and Costello have added an extra $10m to $20m, depending on which set of numbers you are looking at, to the ACT's budget problems? I look forward to seeing some real answers as to how the ACT Government intends to do this.

While Mrs Carnell's report is long on explanation of what happened at the Premiers Conference, it provides no information on her proposed directions to deal with these problems. Mr Speaker, in dealing with them, Mrs Carnell must take a serious look at her priorities. She has already shown an inclination to eat into basic community services, health centres, Jobline - - -

Mr De Domenico: Jobline?

MR WHITECROSS: Jobline. There is a range of other community services which the ordinary members of the community require and use. They are basic community services; not luxuries, by any stretch of the imagination. Mrs Carnell has been cutting those things, in spite of the fact that she inherited a very good financial position. This was supported not just by the Evatt Foundation but also by the rating agencies, who have consistently said that our financial position was a very good one.

Mrs Carnell: All that means is that our debt is not too bad. You know that.

MR WHITECROSS: Mrs Carnell, what it shows is that our financial position is a long way from what you have been claiming it is. Mr Speaker, we all remember Mrs Carnell last year talking about the mythical $120m budget hole. Like Mr Costello's $8 billion hole, it turned out to be a nasty publicity stunt designed to warm the community to some budget cuts and to justify cuts to services in line with the Liberals' agenda of small government and fewer community services. In fact, we all recall Mrs Carnell being quoted before the last election as saying that it was not the role of government to provide services. Mrs Carnell has since demonstrated her commitment to that policy position. It will be interesting to see where she goes.

Since the Premiers Conference Mrs Carnell has had only two real approaches to dealing with her problem. She said, "We are going to charge the Commonwealth for lots of things. We are going to charge them for parking". She talked about that in her statement today. She talked about FID on business enterprises and charging the Commonwealth to register its cars, but when she had a meeting with the Prime Minister to talk about the special problems the ACT faces - and she explained this in question time today - the Prime Minister said, "Yes, we acknowledge that the ACT faces special problems, but we are not going to do anything about it. Bad luck". Mrs Carnell tries to tell the Canberra community that she is going to get some extra money out of the Commonwealth through these taxes and charges, but all the indications coming out of the Commonwealth are that they are not interested. Unless the Commonwealth agrees,

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