Page 1837 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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Have you read the statement? Do you acknowledge what it was that Standard and Poor’s were saying? They said, “We would have liked the government to have been tougher in the budget, but a good effort.”
Mr Mulcahy: I thought they congratulated you.
MR STANHOPE: They did, in their own way. I must say that I have not had the introduction to the New York offices of Standard and Poor’s or Moody’s.
MR SPEAKER: The minister’s time has expired.
MR MULCAHY: Thank you for that fascinating reply to my question about WPI. My supplementary question asks the Treasurer: can he assure the Assembly that families, retirees and those on fixed incomes will not be disadvantaged by this indexation change, given that the WPI will be 45 per cent higher than the CPI?
MR STANHOPE: The revenue measures that are incorporated in the budget are tough; they are hard. It is with real regret that the government has, through a range of measures, imposed an additional burden on families and property throughout the ACT. It comes, however, in an environment which is at the heart of the budget and at the heart of responsible fiscal management within the territory, and that is the need to close the fiscal gap between revenues, receipts, and expenditure.
We all know in this place that every government since 1989 has been complicit in the provision of government services at a level and at a rate significantly above national benchmarks. You in government and we in government are all complicit, at one level or another, in the level of expenditure on government services within the territory, averaging out, over all government service delivery, at 20 per cent above the national average.
This is in a circumstance where our receipts from our own source revenue, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics as recently as March this year, were 11 per cent below the national benchmark or average. These are fairly simple sums. We spend at 20 per cent above the national benchmark. In March of this year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics informed us that our taxes, rates and receipts averaged at about 11 per cent below the national benchmark. This is a very simple sum.
Successive governments—you, in government; we, in government—have attempted to maintain or cover that fiscal gap through the utilisation, for recurrent purposes, superannuation receipts and land sales receipts. You did it. And we have done it. We have each sought to maintain a level of service delivery 20 per cent above the national average, by reliance on land sales receipts and superannuation returns.
This government, in this budget, has said that this is unsustainable. Land sales receipts are dropping. Superannuation liabilities are increasing. The population is ageing. The demand on services is increasing. We must act responsibly. We must close the fiscal gap. We must wean ourselves off land sales receipts and superannuation revenues for the purposes of paying our bills. We can utilise those receipts for the purposes of our superannuation liabilities or for our capital programs, but we must get out of the habit
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