Page 1242 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 May 2006
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Mr Stanhope: Absolutely.
MRS BURKE: You do—all right—no mention of good luck from the Chief Minister but, rather, an acknowledgment that the former Liberal government had left the ACT economy in a pretty good shape.
In summary, therefore, one has to look at the facts. One has to look at what we have before us. In 2001, the Stanhope government inherited an ACT economy that was performing very strongly and an ACT budget that was in an extremely sound position. In four years, despite a flood of revenue, the Stanhope government has managed to turn things around completely, in a style not differing much from what might be termed as authorising expenditure with the blessing of the “Ministry of Silly Walks”, and I think we all know that from Monty Python.
On a more serious note, we now have an ACT budget in deficit at a time when the Australian economy is performing soundly. The interesting thing here is that Mr Stanhope himself says how well things are doing: “Look at the cranes in the sky.” The ACT economy remains extremely buoyant and no other jurisdiction has budgeted for a deficit. The only conclusion is that the economic managers of the ACT economy, the Stanhope government, have shown no evidence now of grasping the principles by which an economy should be managed. This view of Mr Stanhope’s economic credentials is reinforced by his performance at a recent Housing Industry Association economic outlook conference in March 2006, when he stated as then Acting Treasurer:
Good luck rather than good management has saved Canberra from an even worse budgetary position than it is in.
Of all the utterances of our Chief Minister over the past four years or so, this one would have to be the most disturbing and scary pronouncement that he has ever made: “Good luck rather than good management has saved Canberra.” There we go. We have a Chief Minister who has the temerity to say that the only reason for a particular outcome for which he has responsibility is good luck rather than good management. Boy, this seems to me to represent a complete indictment of this Chief Minister’s credentials. Former federal Labor leader Bill Hayden’s drover’s dog presumably could have done just as well as Jon Stanhope in managing the ACT economy.
So where does this leave us now? Immediately after the Chief Minister had partially confirmed the savings he estimated would arise from his centralised corporate services model, we pointed out to him that his claim that these savings would return the ACT budget to surplus were absolute nonsense, that his government’s own estimates showed that the ACT budget would be in deficit for at least the next three years, and that savings of $10 million each year were not enough to overcome deficits of $100 million, $57 million or $17 million. Moreover, when he changed his tune to claim that the savings could be up to $18 million in the outyears, this still did not achieve a surplus until 2008-09. Just a little bit of trouble with your numbers, Treasurer, I feel—and numbers that one would think you, as Treasurer, would have at the forefront of your mind. Perhaps your awareness is now heightened concerning these key numbers following the question you received yesterday on this very topic.
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