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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2346 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

critique this first Labor budget in eight years. I believe that much of the motivation for this reaction stems from the government's failure to satisfy many expectations and commitments they themselves have set for this budget.

Labor has always made much of their supposed commitment to the less affluent in the community, a commitment qualified, to a very great extent, by its historic reliance on indirect taxation. This has reared its head again in the form of a savage rise in stamp duty and car registration. These are regressive imposts, in anyone's language, that will hurt the battlers most-the people whom Labor likes to call its own. What hypocrisy! The rhetoric of this budget conceals that it is a graveyard of broken promises. I propose today to point to just a few dozen of those-a dozen or two of those broken promises.

The first promise to be broken occurred even before the budget was delivered. Those of us who served in the Fourth Assembly will remember how Mr Quinlan, as shadow Treasurer, rose as regularly as clockwork to condemn the practice of releasing budget details before budget day. What he called "the hypocrisy of putting out budget leaks" was lambasted as having been somehow unprofessional. He gave the impression of being very annoyed.

What a revelation, then, to see the stream of media announcements over the past three weeks. Even potential ministers were enlisted for the task. The justification for early release was that details like these might be lost in the swelter of budget day. That is funny. Isn't that the line we used to use? I think we did use that line. Imitation, of course, is the sincerest form of flattery.

The next broken promise: Labor promised it would reduce the cost of ministerial support by $2.3 million. However, the budget papers say only that this has been absorbed into overheads. This means it is actually not a saving, as promised, but increased spending on administration.

In effecting this small subterfuge, Labor has broken another of its promises. That is promise No 3-to improve accountability. Whereas previous budgets have detailed where money was spent and for what purpose, this budget hides how much is to be spent on providing ministers with speeches, briefing notes, support staff and so on. It will be several millions of dollars, but we will not be told how much. Labor has failed the first test when it comes to accountability.

The budget papers reveal a startling increase in FOI requests since the Stanhope government came to office-a rise of 50 per cent. This is very telling, I would say, Mr Speaker.

Promise No 4: no slush funds under Labor. Who could forget Labor's fury when discretionary funding was provided to Minister Moore in the area of health a few years ago? Yet this budget has discretionary allocations. Yes, slush funds of $7.2 million in education, $3 million in housing and who knows how much for the public service wage increase.

Broken promise No 5: Labor will be able to deliver a surplus each and every year of this government. Labor even published a figure in its October 2001 financial statement for the size of its surplus-$24 million in 2002-03. Remember that?

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