Page 1972 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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families send their children to schools out of the area and private schools. Families will have to wear additional costs for new uniforms and for transporting their kids to the next suburban school by public transport or, if no buses are available, by car.
Add to that the increase in rates and land taxes, not to mention water, and this budget will tip many Brindabella families over the edge and see them moving to south-west Sydney to make way for the new recruits that have been falsely lured by a costly sugar-coated campaign by the Labor government. It seems like the ten-pound-pom exercise of the 1950s all over again. Get them here at all cost. When they get here, there is nothing for them.
The lack of appropriate infrastructure, stalled road upgrades, a medical centre for Lanyon, shopping centre upgrades and security, and a lessened police presence are and have been issues in Tuggeranong long before the budget was handed down. Where the hell has the money gone?
In conclusion, the opposition will have a lot more to say about this tragic budget in later debates, but for now it should be put on the record that the Stanhope government have severely let down the people of Canberra with their 2006-07 budget. The Stanhope government have targeted the ACT community extremely unfairly in order to pay for the government’s propensity over six years to waste money on unnecessary projects to glorify their Chief Minster.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo) (5.25): It has been a bad week for the Chief Minister but a much worse week for Canberrans in general. This is the worst budget in the history of self-government, no doubt about it. It is the budget where the people of Canberra pay the price for the ineptitude of the Stanhope Labor government.
Mr Pratt: It keeps getting worse, though.
MR SESELJA: It does keep getting worse. The Chief Minister has said, “We live beyond our means, we oversupply all areas, we do not tax enough.” The reality is that it is this government that has been living beyond its means and Canberrans are now going to pay for it.
The budget for the ACT is a milestone, according to the Chief Minister, one where the government has made the first serious steps in forcing the ACT to live within its means. Why has it done this? Because, under this government, we have seen some of the most wasteful spending and ludicrous initiatives in the history of self-government. I do not have time here to list them all, but I will list a number of wasteful exercises.
We have spent around $6 million on planning for a busway that will never go ahead; $5 million for a community inclusion board to tell the government how to listen to the community; $7.3 million for the arboretum—that is one special tree park; $6 million spent on a real-time bus information system; $4 million spent on marketing at the LDA; and $128 million for a prison. Millions of dollars have been spent in recent years on on-road cycle lanes that no-one uses, and the list goes on. It is not Canberrans who have been living beyond their means; it is this government. There has been wasteful spending and inadequate management of priorities.
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