Page 1944 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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necessary because of the decisions—the very poor, often foolish and deluded decisions—taken by this government over the last 4½ years.
It is public servants, community groups and ordinary Canberrans who will now pay a high price for the ineptitude and mismanagement of the Stanhope government, through higher charges, reduced services, job cuts and opportunities lost. It will mean that the elderly man or woman surviving on a pension linked to the CPI has to think twice before he or she decides whether they can afford to turn on the heater. It means that people on low incomes will worry about how they will pay the higher rents that will inevitably flow from the hike in rates for home owners. It means that businesses will struggle from fewer people being attracted to the ACT. For those who lose their jobs, it will mean dislocation and disruption. Those school communities which are to be disbanded will experience an emotional wrench from familiar people, places and routines and have to adapt, some of them probably with difficulty, to new and potentially less desirable arrangements further from home. For others, it is doubtful whether specialist disability services will be replicated in the new schools. For those who lose their jobs, there will also be trauma and dislocation. And if it is to be short-lived, it will be because of the federal government’s ability to absorb new talent.
This is not a courageous budget. It is the result of delusion and folly, and nothing can excuse it because the crisis it is designed to meet is entirely of this government’s own making, for which it should stand thoroughly condemned.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (3.41): I have heard the Chief Minister give a number of versions of his tabling speech and I have now listened to the opposition leader’s views on the budget. I have emerged from this process a little the wiser, but with three sets of questions.
The first set is: for whom is this budget? Which citizens will it most benefit? Whose agenda does it reflect? The second is: as this budget purports to look 20 years or more down the track, according to the Treasurer, where are the social and ecological considerations, since we know that in 20 years the impact of climate change will be well and truly upon us? How forward looking, really, is this budget? Thirdly, would the opposition have done much differently? I will explore the budget in more detail and then I will come back and answer these questions.
As Mr Stanhope said this morning, the budget is the most important policy document a government produces. The Greens believe that a fair budget puts the interests of the territory’s people first. The best way to secure the wellbeing of our most vulnerable—children, people with mental illnesses and disabilities, the aged and people with few financial safeguards—is with the provision of quality public health, education and social housing.
The Canberra community voted for this government because it trusted a Labor government to care more about the things that matter—good schooling, housing security, a supporting community and a clean environment. That is not to say that having a strong economy is not important or that a government can or should allow operating deficits to continue. But you cannot eat money and, while we would all like an opportunity to see if money really can buy happiness, most people would agree that when push comes to shove health and emotional wellbeing are more important than spending a few minutes
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