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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 3 Hansard (27 May) . . Page.. 656 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I do not know who wrote it. It is very disappointing that they are turning this whole tax debate into a "GST or no GST" election issue again, because we could take advantage of this tax reform debate to look at other options for revenue raising, what we want as a society and what function we consider taxation has to serve. Is it the redistribution of wealth? Is it about environmental incentives and so on? I am very afraid it is going to end up a "GST or no GST" issue again and we will be losing a very important opportunity to look at this critical issue.

The other thing I always have to say when we have a discussion about economics is that obviously the Greens say that a debt to future generations is not a good thing. The problem with accrual accounting is that it does not tell us the extent of the other debts we are accruing at this point in time, the social and environmental debts. In this context there are two important issues we must think about. We do have an accounting system that is fatally flawed because, while it tells us about one debt, it is one debt only. It is not telling us about these other debts. The second important point is that we must make decisions with a longer-term timeframe in mind. I have been saying this consistently since I have been in this place, and I will continue to say it and to repeat it.

What this debate is about really is saying that good managers do not plan just for today and tomorrow; they plan for the future. But we are not doing that in a whole range of areas. If we do not plan for an ageing population we are creating a debt for future generations. If we pollute the air, water and soil we are leaving an immense debt for future generations. We are not planning for the human capital losses we are going to experience when a large proportion of our nurses and teachers retire over the next few years. We still do not have a comprehensive social plan.

Another important part of longer-term planning is developing a more sophisticated cost-benefit analysis to determine where savings could be achieved through better preventative strategies. Without better analysis, we do not know whether we are really saving money from a lot of the policy initiatives that have come out of this Government. There is always the example of the children with autism or with disabilities. If they are not serviced and supported correctly when they are young, the costs are much greater in the long run. Obviously, there are many environmental examples of the savings that will result from prevention and from intervention. By becoming more energy efficient, for example, we could be saving money. Money invested in making government buildings more energy efficient is paid back in only five years.

I was very disappointed in Brendan Smyth's answer, Mr Speaker, in question time last week when I asked why there had been such a substantial cut to the energy management program. The answer Mr Smyth gave me was, "We have done it and we will just monitor what we need to do next". I do not think that is a satisfactory answer at all. We have a whole housing stock. We have school buildings which are certainly not best practice energy efficient. I was very surprised to hear that Mr Smyth thinks we have achieved what can be achieved in government office buildings as well. If that were the case, I think we would have seen a huge party given by the Government, and I do not remember that happening. It would indeed have been something to celebrate. I am not pretending that there are easy answers, but we do have to start acknowledging the flaws in the models we have worked with.

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