Page 1942 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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So almost two-thirds of a notional increase of $60 million does not deliver a single instance of additional health care to the ACT community. As so often, the government is spending more, not doing more. The ACT has the highest per capita public housing dwellings in the country, valued at over $3 billion, yet in the ACT since 2001 there has been a growth of around 700 per cent in the number of applicants classified as in greatest need according to the Australian Productivity Commission’s report on government services in 2006.
The administration of public housing is woefully inefficient. The same report shows that the ACT is second only to the Northern Territory in taking 50 days on average to prepare vacant properties for reoccupation. Budget figures show that ACT Housing will be worse off by $13 million next financial year. Over the next three years, Housing ACT plans to slash its expenditure by $33 million. Given the already parlous state of public housing, it is very hard to believe that that is realistically achievable. Of that expenditure, $18 million is meant to be put back into the promised $30 million budget injection for housing which the government has promised for a few years. In a budget of around $104 million per year, $11 million in savings is, I suggest, virtually impossible. It is about 10 per cent of a housing budget that probably is somewhat stretched and when people have difficulty having services being delivered. I will be absolutely amazed that that is a realistic estimate that can be met.
The environment, which should be a trophy piece for a Labor government which likes to profess to be green, has only token increases in this budget that fail to compensate for the cuts in previous years. Over years of the government forming and reforming environmental agencies in the bureaucracy, it is impossible now to actually trace spending cuts in this area. The latest incidence of this is the merging of Environment and Heritage, the Office of Sustainability and ACT Forests.
Climate change is probably the hottest issue in environment, but there is no money for it. The environment minister says that the government’s poor fiscal position meant that climate change was not a top priority. The answer to the question “where do I make cuts?” would be in vanity items like the Human Rights Commission and things like the international arboretum and the bus lane and, yes, even deferring the prison because that, at the end of the day, is a can-have and a must-have. But fundamentally, in terms of what we would do differently, no Liberal government would let the situation deteriorate to this stage. No Liberal government would not know how many public servants we had in each of our departments and express absolute surprise at the fact that there are 2,500 additional—15,500 up to 18,000; where did they come from? No Liberal government would let the situation deteriorate to this stage.
Let me remind you, when we are talking history, that the previous Liberal government inherited an appalling deficit from Labor and handed over to a Labor government, seven years later, a surplus situation, and during very difficult times nationally. That demonstrates economic competence. You were given a very good surplus. You have squandered it through your own incompetence. So, if and when we take over in 2008, there is going to be a lot of work to do to fix up the mess you lot you have left us in.
Do not be gulled by Labor’s promises to fix things, either. They are empty words. Remember Whitlam. Remember Beazley’s “black hole”. For whatever reason, it just
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