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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2213 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

through the budget grants administered separately by the community grants program and by service purchasing contracts, also decided separately to the budget process, and through other miscellaneous trust fund arrangements and so on which the government has levels of oversight over.

The government, in 1999, committed to undertake an audit of community services which would have made clear where the gaps in unmet need existed. The government also promised to consider the implications of the SACS award. This has not been done. The SACS award is not mentioned in the budget. There is still no overall community services framework, no strategic understanding of the interplay between community services, community safety and justice. The key result areas of the budget papers do not list social outcomes. These basic understandings are the kinds of things you might expect to be in place if you read what has been said about social capital by this government.

Community services facilities, in particular information technology assets, are reported by the sector to be becoming obsolete. The government has allocated $50,000 to help peak community organisations establish sites on the Internet but has not allocated any funding to assist with upgrading the equipment to follow through on sites created.

This pattern has been followed in other areas. The government has allocated $50,000 for the Year of the Volunteer, but none of this is described as going toward ongoing training. GST is assumed to be dealt with by increasing the grant by 10 per cent. There is no mention of the compliance costs, even though its own statement on estimated outcomes for 1999-2000 includes costs associated with GST administration of $3.5 million.

Overall, priorities are skewed away from any real concern with social capital towards business-Impulse Airlines $8 million; social capital, $0.5 million; wine/tourism, $400,000 odd; V8 car race, $3 million, but we know $7 million. Last year it was $17 million in the long run, if not more. Basically, we are seeing a large amount of funding going to support business.

Revenue and the regressivity of federal government taxes, as I said, are not taken into account by this government. One of our local revenue raisers is the gambling tax. I remind members that problem gamblers constitute 15 per cent of regular non-lottery gamblers and account for about $3.5 billion across Australian expenditure annually, and about one-third of the gambling industry's market. They lose, on average, about $12,000 each per year, compared with just under $650 for other gamblers.

Revenue streams are regressive and unfair, and we need to remember that one in five families in the ACT are economically disadvantaged. The State of the Territory Report made that quite clear. It is extremely offensive in this environment to then see a government happily commit $17 million of taxpayers' money to a car race. This government is well and truly immersed in the corporate welfare sector, claiming that this form of welfare will lead to better outcomes for all the community. However, they do not even pretend to analyse the real impact of this approach on our society. They do not look at where the benefit falls from the subsidy to business. They are not able to present an analysis which supports their claim that their approach to government is going to support the community now and into the future and protect our environment. For that reason, on behalf of the Greens, I am not able to support this budget.

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