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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 1995 ..

MRS BURKE (5.21): Overall—one can only say “disappointment” when I think of this last budget of this government’s first term of office. Why can I say that? Well, for six years this government sat in opposition telling the then Liberal government about just how they were going to do things better and just how fiscally responsible they were going to be. But I think we had better let the figures speak for themselves. I have to say I am disappointed because I did believe that they were going to make a difference. But after three budgets all we are seeing is a slow slide backwards. Do not take my word for it: many people better qualified than I have said similar things.

This government inherited a very sound, strong economic base despite Mr Quinlan’s grumblings from the other side. They should not take any glory for that. Kate Carnell and then Gary Humphries left this economy in great shape. What a shame we cannot say the same now. Our future—Canberra’s future—has been squandered and frittered away over the last three years. What is even more serious is that overall we have a situation now where taxpayers are paying more and getting the same or less.

It is obvious to us all, now that the budget has been handed down, that there are still many opportunities and yet many challenges ahead for the ACT. The challenge is that this government is spending beyond its means. The opportunities are for the Liberal opposition to implement its policies for a creative Canberra after the next election. The devil of this budget will of course be in the detail which will become clearer through the estimates process. With this to one side, allow me to address the budget with regard to the portfolios I have responsibility for and which particularly affect or benefit the constituents in Molonglo.

There are some good initiatives contained within this budget that I will comment on shortly. However, I would have to say that this budget looks to be a budget of missed opportunities and one that certainly lacks creativity. It is a real concern to me that this budget seeks to spend significant amounts of band-aid funding—in fact in excess of $78 million—in key areas in what can only be described as simply covering up three years of poor ministerial leadership, while not addressing a number of key concerns raised by the community sector over the last three years.

In brief what we see in this budget is $45 million allocated specifically to child protection over four years to fix a problem that should never have got this bad. This is on top of the government in the previous year stripping $3 million per annum from care and protection services for children in the ACT while, at the same time, the cost per substitute care day for carers increased considerably. Obviously I welcome the funding for child protection. However, $45 million is an extraordinary amount of money for one single issue. If I put it into context, the same amount would pay for the Commonwealth’s entire primary health care initiative for indigenous Australians—released in the budget this week—and all three Commonwealth budget initiatives together for insulin pumps, after-hours GP clinics and cochlear implants.

I welcome the allocation but the point remains that this, reluctantly, seems like fix-up money to smooth over systemically poor ministerial leadership. It certainly is a case of catch-up funding which will simply meet the current level of need and demand. I also understand at this point that the recommendations of the Vardon report will be addressed separately. I await that report with interest and I will be talking about that later. Within

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