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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2083 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

I learnt an awful lot just from listening and observing the chairman of the committee. Why was it a budget of missed opportunity? I will give you a couple of examples. The initiatives we got turned up between the draft budget and the final budget. Actually, all it was was a spending spree. It was as though people had won the lottery. Mr Speaker, there was nothing in the draft budget to indicate that there might have been a possibility of this huge windfall. Halfway between the process we saw a supplementary budget turn up seeking $43 million.

My criticism, Mr Speaker, in this instance is limited to the process that the government imposed upon the Assembly and the community at large. The government would have been aware that this money was in the offing. They limited the standing committees to a budget bottom line. In the draft budget process, of course, they did not tell them what the bottom line was. We did not know where the starting point was. You can go back to the old budget if you like, but half a dozen things popped up in the middle. What we actually got, in fact, was a list of the initiatives. The initiatives in my view, Mr Speaker, were cobbled together with a view to the election, and some of them were not very well thought out.

Take, for example, Mr Speaker, the reduction of $58 for registration. Everybody in the ACT who pays registration fees will be thrilled to pieces about a reduction of $58, but let's just think about it for a second. It is only $50 actually, Mr Speaker, when you consider that your compulsory third party has been jacked up by $8. So we have reduced it by $50.

Those people who get concessions, who do not have to pay any registration, do not get the benefit of this at all. So when we are all retired, guess what; we do not get it. But we do get the $8 rise in the compulsory third party, Mr Speaker, and if we are obliged because of our economic circumstance to pay quarterly, is there any reduction to correspond with the $50 reduction? No way, Mr Speaker. You still have to pay the administrative fee of $25 a hit, so you pay an extra $100 anyway. So those poor people who are obliged to take it out quarterly because they cannot afford it are still paying that extra $100 while the rest of us enjoy a $50 reduction. Now, that is not what I call addressing poverty, Mr Speaker. Quite the opposite.

When we look at the budget, say for the Department of Urban Services, we see the items addressing these magical headings of the government's, Mr Speaker, such as early intervention. What's in the early intervention section for the Department of Urban Services? You can look, and you will look in vain, Mr Speaker. There is nothing in there.

What about addressing poverty? There is nothing in there either. We all know that most people in this town who are suffering poverty have trouble dealing with the everyday things, such as bus fares, registration and the like. Is there anything in there? Yes, there is. There is still that $100 that they have to pay for registration. They are not alleviating poverty, Mr Speaker. In some cases this government is creating it.

When the government found out it had all these multi-millions to spend, it thought, "Oh dear, if we lose government at the end of the year we can't leave these devils with any money otherwise they will spend it." So they came up with magic schemes to spend the cash and leave us hanging there. Then, as the chairman of the Estimates Committee pointed out in that process, and as he has pointed out here in the house, they forgot

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