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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (6 May) . . Page.. 1528 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

What we get in this budget is apparently a very strong financial position. However, my concern is that, while this Government is very committed to addressing the accruing liability related to superannuation - this financial liability is easy to quantify - we do not see a willingness, or even an acknowledgment of the need, to realise that other sorts of liabilities are accruing as well. They are environmental and social liabilities.

The use of the concept of intergenerational equity came into the debate on superannuation. That concept needs to be applied also to decisions around the environment and society. While it is not as easy as it is to paint a picture of accruing superannuation liability with graphs and figures, it is just as necessary and important to address these other sorts of liabilities that are accruing, even though they are very difficult to quantify.

This Government claims to be a caring government, but in my view, because we do not see any real acknowledgment of the long term, we are not seeing the financial impact of not putting money into prevention and intervention in the social and environmental areas. We are not seeing a commitment to supporting the most vulnerable in our community, including marginalised and unemployed youth and indigenous people. We also seek clearly stated policy goals and clearly stated processes for evaluating whether these goals have been achieved.

This budget - and there is some policy direction in it - selectively applies national competition policy and the Government's policy on service purchasing by privileging government and business providers over well-established and reliable non-government providers in the community service sector, for example, in the funding of ACT Community Care, to provide correctional health services to Quamby and Belconnen Remand Centre and in the funding of younger people's residential respite care services.

On the revenue side, many of the new charges the Government has proposed in the budget are regressive. That is why I asked my question in question time. There has to be a concern if a government is claiming to be caring. These revenue measures - for example, the proposed pharmaceutical payments program and the new court charges - will disproportionately affect people on low income. The new court charges, along with cuts to the legal aid budget, will further restrict the access of low-income people to the courts and therefore effectively to justice. Justice must not be accessible only to those who can afford it.

It is clear that in developing these revenue-rating strategies the Government has not taken into account tests for equity. That is no doubt the reason we had the very disappointing and unsatisfactory answer from the Chief Minister at question time. The community sector has been calling for a review of revenue strategies for three years to test for equity. If the Government had done this, then they should have been able to table such a report for the Assembly to scrutinise.

The budget has not given adequate attention, in my view, to supporting young people who have been marginalised from the education system and the labour market. Scant attention is given to employment programs for young people particularly, and we see a lot of attention given to issues of concern to society which are at the crisis end.

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