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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1806 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

Australian dollar is under enormous pressure; a tax that imposes severe compliance costs on small business; a tax that will increase costs and have an inevitable and unknown effect on consumption.

The GST will have an enormous impact on ordinary people: families, low-income earners, self-funded retirees, pensioners, and small business. We have seen in the past couple of days the looming impact in the price lists published by Professor Fels of the ACCC. Australians are already paying the GST in the supermarket, in the department store, on their home and car insurance and in so many other ways. They will only pay more when the tax is introduced. Even the Howard government-and, presumably, its willing band of supporters in this place-knows that the tax cuts will not compensate ordinary Australians for the impact of the GST, particularly after the impact of interest rate hikes. Yet the Chief Minister and the Treasurer are enthusiastic supporters of this inequitable tax.

Mr Speaker, in January the government launched a crude attempt to hijack the budget process. Its draft budget is better characterised as a misguided effort to tiptoe through the minefield of minority government. It sought to subvert the tenets of Westminster parliamentary democracy, established and refined over centuries, by having non-executive members sign up. It unashamedly wanted to abandon any formal scrutiny of how it proposed to disburse taxpayers' funds.

It is true that the government has adopted some of what the committees of this place put forward-at least Mr Rugendyke got his beat policemen. It is true that the budget papers reflect much of what was put before the Assembly in January, but there is much in them which was not disclosed or even available in January, which points to the mockery of this process. The government apparently was not aware of the increased funding it was to receive from a change in the way the Grants Commission calculates its relativities. Mrs Carnell claims that she lobbied fiercely, yet she was not aware of the windfall about to arrive.

The government did not take account of the pre-GST boom in housing and construction that led to another windfall. It did not take account of the rise in revenue that was to appear in the months ahead. The draft budget's bottom line for the current year was a $64 million deficit and for this budget year a $2 million surplus. We now have a $3 million deficit for this year and a $4.2 million surplus in 2000-01, but no indication was given to the Assembly committees reviewing the draft budget that there was a windfall available.

Was the government aware of the windfall? If it was and it did not inform the Assembly committees, then the draft budget process was, in addition to all its other flaws, simply fraudulent. What is the point in putting up a draft budget that is so far out of kilter with what is to follow? It allows the Chief Minister at the vital moment to flutter over Canberra dispensing stardust as she waves her magic social capital wand.

The government's arrogance was demonstrated by Mrs Carnell at the Press Club yesterday when she admitted that the whole process was at least in part designed to appease the crossbench. The Treasurer has questioned the need to continue with the estimates process. I said earlier that this government followed the Kennett model when it

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