Page 1989 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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MR PRATT: Yes, Mr Speaker, it is.
MR SPEAKER: It is appropriate to discuss rates to remain relevant.
MR PRATT: As I was saying, where has the funding gone? Why is there a need to introduce a $20 million levy? Very significant funding for some of those areas has gone astray. Is this levy required, for example, to fund the bushfire fuel load management program, a program which clearly has been neglected over the last couple of years? It was good to see in the budget that urban services has had an increase in funding of, I think, $1.7 million this year and about $1.5 million recurring over the next few years. That will certainly go some way to bridging the gap, but is it enough and is that why the $20 million levy has been imposed? Has it been imposed because there has not been sufficient funding set aside for that fuel load management program?
Mr Speaker, let us look at some of the blow-outs. Let us look at the government’s and the ESA’s track record on financial management, which perhaps explains now the knee-jerk reaction of introducing this levy and these rates. I refer to June 2005, when it became apparent that the government had mismanaged the ESA budget. I pointedly refer to the $5.4 million boost announced for the Emergency Services Authority, which then represented a budget blow-out and therefore was a major concern. Is that what this levy is aimed at? Is this levy aimed at making up for the blow-outs of last years and for blow-outs which, so far, are concealed in this budget?
Mr Speaker, you will recall that by then the government had blown out the territory’s budget to well over $90 million, I suppose the second worst budget in terms of the comparisons that were being made earlier. The government has shown that it cannot manage the emergency services budget properly. It had to rely on the Treasurer’s Advance again last year and, of course, the Treasurer’s Advance is essentially for unforeseen expenditure, such as major emergencies, disasters that are beyond the control of government. The government cannot budget for disasters. Surely the Treasurer’s Advance is for those particular purposes. Does this levy replace the moneys from the Treasurer’s Advance that we have seen misspent year after year to make up for ESA overspends? Is that what this levy is for, Mr Speaker?
The emergency services minister needs to reassure the community that its safety is not being compromised via insufficient funding for such fundamental services. The 2005 blow-out that I was talking about, which was then the latest in a series of blow-outs, came on top of a raft of failings in the emergency services portfolio. Are we now going to see this rates levy aimed at trying to plug the gap for what has been serial misbehaviour on the part of this government and the Emergency Services Authority in managing expenditure because they simply cannot, for some reason, spend within budget? Why can’t the government ensure that the Emergency Services Authority spends its hard-earned dollars on targeted programs to ensure that we get an efficient emergency services family of organisations which can operate within budget?
Mr Speaker, I conclude by saying that it is a crying shame with regard to fundamental programs such as the community fire units program for which 80 units were required to have been raised, trained and equipped, according to the McLeod inquiry, that to date only 22 of those are up and running. In addition to the essential services that I was
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