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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1153 ..

MR SPEAKER: Mr Berry, I uphold the point of order. I would ask members to remember that this is an important debate, as indeed was Tuesday's.

MR WHITECROSS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Mrs Carnell does not like it. That is the problem.

MR SPEAKER: Do not be provocative. Just speak.

MR WHITECROSS: Just being here is provocative enough for Mrs Carnell. The Liberals' term in office has not been known for its innovation or strategic thinking. A budget that was a response to our current economic environment would have been yet another admission that her three-year budget was a fantasy, and there was no way she was prepared to concede this. We have another Federal budget next week, with further cuts to the public sector in Canberra expected; yet she delivers her budget without any regard for this. If Mrs Carnell were serious about responding to the economic crisis in Canberra, the ACT budget would have been after the Federal budget so that we could respond to it. Instead, Mrs Carnell delivered her budget only one week before her Federal colleagues, to give herself another opportunity to blame her Liberal running mates. It is another attempt to divert attention from her own failures. Mrs Carnell, you are guilty, but your modus operandi is to point the finger at someone else.

Mrs Carnell promised us more of the same, and that is what we have got. More of the same was not enough in 1995, it was not enough in 1996 and, tragically, it is not enough in 1997. On Tuesday we saw the continuation of Carnell's blinkered approach to financial management - more of the same cuts in services, ad hoc policy and smoke and mirrors accounting. The Government continued with its ad hoc policy approach, offering a bit of money here and a bit of money there in an attempt to keep as many groups as possible happy but with no stability and no strategic direction.

This is why the Canberra economy will continue to suffer under this Government's lack of commitment to the provision of an affordable and reliable public transport system. Mr Speaker, the budget brought down on Tuesday will see ACTION's budget cut by $3m over the next two years, including $2m in the next year. This will lead to a further reduction in services, resulting in more people becoming frustrated with the bus service and finding alternative forms of transport. This Government has learnt nothing in the past two years about the management of the bus system that has led to a massive downturn in ACTION patronage, and this Government cares nothing for people who are dependent on public transport.

Mrs Carnell's creative accounting used last year to disguise borrowings is used again this year. This year her budget hinges on plundering ACTEW's coffers. ACTEW is being made to hand over $173m. So much for the vision of corporatisation, of ACTEW being allowed to operate as an independently managed commercial enterprise. Mrs Carnell's finances are in such a desperate state that she has revised and accelerated ACTEW's payments of dividends to government. In one year they have gone from $25m to $74m - a 192 per cent increase. In 1998-99 it is expected to drop back to $32m. And who said it was not an election budget? Not only is Mrs Carnell milking ACTEW's cash; she is making ACTEW buy all the streetlight poles in Canberra, at a cost of $100m.

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