Page 1133 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 3 May 2006
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he is no worse than a Liberal government, then he is no better than a Liberal government. Why should true Labor voters support him? The way the government has latched on to Stephen Bartos’s observation that sometimes it is inappropriate to release budget papers betrays the desperation that it seems to be experiencing.
Why was not the fact that the review was always intended to be strictly for cabinet purposes included in the media release when it was announced? Let us see a commitment to public consultation and participatory democracy in practice, rather than mere rhetoric. I do not expect the government to release the report this afternoon. I do hope it will release it, in whole or in part, in the near future. I will support the motion.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (3.58): Mr Speaker, I support the motion. The functional review has only been made necessary because the Stanhope government have allowed bureaucracy in the ACT to grow like Topsy, with in the region of 800 additional public servants and the creation of new additional functional authorities, over the last four years.
Despite years of good revenue off the back of Howard’s GST, land taxes and other increases in punitive local government fees and taxes, this mob are rapidly steering the ACT economy well into the red. They have failed to save sufficient of those revenues reaped during the boom times to target future expenditure on essential services. Instead, they have blown millions on ideological and social engineering projects at the expense of essential services in health, education, urban services and community safety. This government have failed to demand new productivities alongside new pay increases and they have failed to find efficiencies to redirect or simply save expenditure without cutting front-line services.
I am deeply concerned about the failure of the Stanhope government to retain police strengths, including delaying or avoiding the adding of real teeth to the ACT policing agreement, which would allow significant efficiencies in the delivery of police services and likely lighten the burden on an overstretched police service. I am deeply concerned to hear that the government’s functional review is likely to lead to cuts in the Emergency Services Authority—not because I do not wish to see cuts in efficiencies, of which there are plenty within the ESA, but because the government, beholden to the public service lobby, is more likely to agree to front-line cuts, not to the ample bureaucracy, which has blown out significantly in three years.
I have been deeply unimpressed with the cuts and waste in the urban services and transport arenas and wonder whether the functional review will properly address these issues as well. Although I am in fact speaking, I am speechless that this government has not already outlined a new capital works five-year funding plan for roads, to take up from where the Liberals’ five-year roads plan ended. Does the functional review identify this lack of strategic planning? We clearly do not know at this point what the report really identifies, because this government will not release the findings of the review for fear of revealing the mess they have made of the ACT’s finances.
I intend to now deal with a couple of the portfolio areas mentioned above, against the background of the mooted functional review. Let us have a look at police and the police agreement. The existing outcomes-based police agreement is not serving the community or the police well. The system is too flexible, which allows services to fall through the
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