Page 1884 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 May 2005
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In terms of management, it would be generally accepted that, if a budget deficit is really required, it would be to fund additional capital works—building infrastructure for the future, building a future for the city. What does this government do? It is proposing to reduce capital works activity. We are taking cash, we are spending it on recurrent items and we are reducing capital works. That is a formula for disaster. And this is on top of a continuing inability by this government to manage its capital works program.
In the 2004-05 budget, this government expects to underspend its capital works budget by nearly a third, almost $80 million, compared to an underspend of $45 million in 2004-05. Moreover, in the 2005-06 budget, this government proposes to reduce funding for new capital works from $110 million in 2004-05 to $77 million in 2005-06.
Mr Speaker, how could I reply to a budget brought down by this Treasurer without making particular reference to his economic prowess and, in particular, his continuing inaccurate use of the term “economic cycles”? We will all recall, of course, his wonderful diagram in blue last year showing us what economic cycles are. Unfortunately for this Treasurer, he still has not answered the very simple question that I have asked him a number of times: can he tell us that the economic cycle, his words, will run from 2002-03 to 2005-06? Here he comes; he drags it out.
According to this economic guru, this economic giant, the ACT was going to experience the end of the current economic cycle during 2005-06, which makes the deficit this year even worse as they knew it was coming because he predicted it. Now, however, the target has changed—startled like a rabbit in the headlights. The Treasurer’s economic cycle is not going to end in 2005-06 at all; it is now going to end in 2008-09. This is the only man in the world who knows when economic cycles end three years before they get there. Fantastic! However, we are not told how he determines his economic cycle nor where the ACT currently is on that cycle. Sadly, it is quite evident that the Treasurer does not like being challenged about these types of matters, especially when he is wrong.
It is extremely disappointing to have to respond to such a sad state of affairs, but it is incumbent on me as Leader of the Opposition and on my colleagues to highlight the failings of this government. As I have documented, these failings range across the breadth of economic policy making, from revenue policies to their spending policies. It has failed on spending policies. It has failed on revenue policies. It has failed on taxation policies. It has failed on infrastructure development. It is a sorry catalogue of failure.
The hope that the Liberal Party offer the ACT is that our economic policies will be realistic; our budget policy will be sensible, taking into account all relevant factors; outcomes for the community will be sound; and the economy of the territory will be strengthened, not destroyed. The hope that the Liberal Party offers stands in stark contrast to the cross-your-fingers approach of Labor. Unlike Labor, we will not spend three years basking in somebody else’s economic sunlight. Unlike Labor, we will not spend three years on plans and tens of millions of dollars on consultants talking about these plans that they now cannot fund and cannot deliver
Look at these Labor disasters: the failure of the white paper as we are now in deficit; the failure of the social plan as there is no money to pay for it; the failure of the spatial plan as it was out of date pretty much as soon as it was published; and the three-ring circus
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