Page 1921 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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seems to have been a reluctance to address, is: how did we get into this situation in the first place? The second question is: what makes this levy so special that it should be immune from scrutiny in the estimates committee?
The answer to the first question can be found in the past four budgets presented by the Stanhope Labor government. Throughout them you will find the unnecessary and costly administrative reshuffling of departmental responsibilities. Every time this happens, there is a new cost to the taxpayer. There is a careless indifference to the consistent ballooning of the ACT public service, an irrational and stubborn insistence on pursuing frivolous and ideologically driven capital projects and a blatant disregard for the long-term viability of the ACT public sector finances.
Mr Speaker, because of your background before entering the Assembly, you understand probably better than almost anyone else here about the situation with fire services. Are we hearing here that this $20 million is about making their conditions more bearable in some of the fire stations that I became aware of when they had a recent open day? Are they going to be able to get decent heating? Are we going to give the mechanics out in, I think, Kambah—Mr Pratt will correct me—working in the middle of the night, on their backs on the ground, decent facilities?
There is no way. This is going to be all about another grab for money. You create a sort of facade that this is all about looking after the safety of our community, and it all goes into the well for Treasury to hang onto, to help meet the extraordinary costs that have come from an overgrown public sector. Those who you might feel have a persuasive case for some help will not in fact be the beneficiaries. The community is, of course, being hoodwinked into believing that that is where these dollars will go.
Essentially over the past four years, the government has enjoyed a revenue bonanza from land sales, stamp duty and the GST. The windfall gains in revenue have amounted to $900 million—$900 million—since 2002-03 but, sadly, it has been squandered. The big item in the blowout is the public sector, the public service. Some $445 million of the windfall has been lost on Labor employing some 2,300 more public servants and paying them higher salaries.
There is a characteristic of this government that I have observed since being elected, and it is a term that I best describe as incrementalism when it comes to spending. As demonstrated by this fire and emergency levy proposal, the government’s modus operandum is to spend more and more taxpayers’ money by adding onto existing expenditure but ignoring any consideration for new and, presumably, higher priority expenditure by deleting lower priority programs. This government has proven itself incapable of making rational economic decisions, particularly when it comes to pursuing capital projects—the infamous arboretum automatically springs to mind—rather than ensuring that basic community needs are adequately met. The way in which these things are held onto is “well, it is deferred but we will not get rid of it”.
Tough luck about people in schools who are going to be affected. Bad luck about the 4,500 people out there trying to get elective surgery, people who are not able to insure privately and who are told, “You might have crippling arthritis but that is an elective operation.” Ask the people if they feel that it is in the category of plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons, or something else. That is what is conjured up when you hear the term
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