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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2358 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

In conclusion, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is my honour to deliver the Australian Democrats' first budget address-in-reply in this chamber. This budget is one that implements many of the previous government's commitments and a handful of Labor's election promises. I believe that the situation could have been very different. The ALP has been in government for eight months and has had the time to develop a better budget. This government should not expect praise for a budget that, effectively, maintains the status quo and perpetuates the mistakes of the past.

I find it curious that Treasurer Quinlan believes that he is picking up the Humphries' tab. I remind them both that the community is the one that picks up the tab, no matter which party is in power. Our community should be paying for outcomes, not endless reviews. Our community should be paying for services that make Canberra more than just something that looks good from a distance. The government will need to do more than just tinker at the edges if it is really serious about shaping Canberra's future.

MS TUCKER (3.47): I will make some general comments first. The Greens have assessed this budget in terms of how it meets our own policy objectives and how it compares with the types of budgets we have had previously under the Liberals. The budget, to a large extent, seems to reflect the accounting background of our current Treasurer, with its strong focus on responsible expenditure and revenue measures and its adherence to sound accounting principles, with the possible downside that it seems a bit staid and lacking in dynamism or imagination. Mr Quinlan spent some time on that in question time.

On the other hand, I am pleased that this budget is about getting back to meeting the basic demands of the community for health, community and education services which were left to run down by the previous government in its drive to treat the ACT as a business enterprise. The revenue-raising measures in the budget appear to be fairly modest, although I am not sure that they are not regressive. I think that some of them could be. As members are well aware, there is a process in train now through the public accounts committee to look at the whole question of revenue forgone, as well as the regressivity of current revenue measures and potential revenue measures; so work certainly is being done by the Assembly that may be useful to the Treasurer for future budgets.

In the area of motor vehicle registration and the stamp duty on vehicle transfers, there could be greater use of environmental factors in setting the rates. For example, the registration charge and the stamp duty for new vehicles could be graded according to the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. It is now mandatory to label vehicles in that regard under federal rules, so it certainly would not be a difficult thing to do that.

There are still many holes in the budget in terms of both funding and detail that need to be further explored. For example, I note that the budget contains $116 million in new initiatives, but the overall expenditure in that regard has gone up by only $6.6 million. Therefore, most of these initiatives either must be just continuations of previous expenditure or have come at the cost of cuts in spending elsewhere. The budget alludes to cuts to assistance programs for small business and the Treasurer in his speech referred to the cessation or winding back of a number of initiatives introduced by the previous government. I look forward to knowing what they are.

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