Page 1940 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
government—and this has been the tendency of most Labor governments—business is just the milch cow to pay for government and get it out of its own self-induced troubles.
Tourism funding has been cut by over $3.5 million in 2006-07, a reduction of 18 per cent. A further $1 million will be cut in 2007-08. According to the tourism industry, the decreased ability to promote tourism is expected to result in a drop of 10 per cent in tourism to the ACT, or around 200,000 tourists. The industry also believes that around 1,200 jobs will be lost as a result. Many of them, as is the case in this industry which employs a lot of young people, will be young people who are getting a start in life.
A cut of $4.5 million could reduce government revenue by more then $20 million. Now that is what you call cutting off your nose to spite your face. It is short-sighted and it is a stupid policy. Only two years ago the Stanhope government promised to inject $28.2 million into tourism over four years—doublespeak again. I think it just shows the folly of this government. They are minor cuts, effectively, in the sum total of things, of several million dollars, but if you do not cut and that money is spent on things like tourism, you are maximising the benefit to the ACT. I think a cut of $4.5 million reducing government revenue by more than $20 million says it all: totally stupid, misguided priorities.
In the Police and Emergency Services portfolio, the government has announced an increase in funding in the budget for an additional 60 police officers for the ACT. But is this really an increase? No, it is not; it is just more doublespeak from the government. They claim that this will, over the next four years, increase the total number of extra police officers funded by the government to 120 officers, bringing us in line with the national average. At first glance this seems highly commendable until one looks at the real figures. And what the government failed to tell the community is that there has been an approximate loss of around 80 police officers over the last few years. This means that, after adding in the 60 officers they claim to have already provided, we actually have a net loss of 20 police, which becomes plus 40 after the additional 60 police promised in the budget.
In emergency services, we find that the government has ignored all the lessons of recent history by absorbing the Emergency Services Authority into the Department of Justice and Community Safety. And this is despite the McLeod Inquiry and despite the Auditor-General’s findings which both recommended a stand-alone agency for emergency services. The McLeod report found that many of the problems experienced during those terrible bushfires of 2003 were exacerbated by the bureaucratic structure that hindered communications and front-line emergency responses under the old Emergency Services Bureau.
The Auditor-General recommended that the bureau be replaced by a statutory authority. Millions have been spent effecting the establishment of the Emergency Services Authority and now this is all money down the drain. Nothing, it seems, has been learned by this government, so we will have a return to the situation in which the bureaucracy paralyses the ACT’s emergency responses, the very thing the ESA was meant to combat. Then the government has the gall to hit ratepayers with a $20 million fire and emergency services tax without any explanation of how that is going to be spent.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .