Page 2132 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 August 2006
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MR MULCAHY: I ask a supplementary question. How can the Treasurer justify such an incredible increase when the current inflation rate in Canberra is less than five per cent?
MR STANHOPE: The government always regrets any impost on the residents of the ACT. It regrets quite specifically the extra burden that both householders and businesses face as a result of decisions taken in the recent budget. In the context of the recent budget, the pressures that this government has dealt with and the issues that it has had to address—many of which were inherited from the previous government—we require, through our rates and charges, a capacity to continue to provide the level of services that we are providing.
As a result of issues we inherited from the Liberal Party and the former government, we have been required to deal with a whole range of unanticipated pressures. Those members who are attempting to interject are suggesting that the government did not have to increase rates to pay for that. We increased funding for the Emergency Services Authority by 42 per cent. We did that because of the state in which we found it. Is there a single member of the Liberal Party who now believes we are overfunding emergency services?
We increased annual recurrent funding for emergency services by 42 per cent. Not a single member of the Liberal Party has suggested it has been overfunded. Therefore, the level of funding—we have had to increase funding to the tune of $26 million a year—is a direct consequence of the appalling state in which the Liberal Party left emergency services.
Mr Corbell: It is a 49 per cent increase.
MR STANHOPE: There is a 49 per cent increase, or $26 million a year, in funding for the fire service, the ambulance service and for emergency services.
Are members of the Liberal Party now saying that that $26 million a year is not justified or, if it is, we do not have to pay for it? Do we have to wave a magic wand or find some other magical way of paying for it other than through charges to the community? In the context of Mr Mulcahy’s question, let us go back to the things we inherited to find out why we have to charge rates at the level we do. It is because of what we inherited in relation to disability services.
Remember the Gallop royal commission, which was commissioned to inquire into the former government’s mismanagement of disability services in the territory? We picked up the consequences of the mismanagement of disability services by the former government. We inherited from the former government enormous gaps in funding in disability services, which were exposed through the Gallop report. Are members of the Liberal Party suggesting that they should not be funded? They certainly did not fund them when they were in government.
So far as they were concerned, they were reasonable gaps, otherwise they would have funded them. This government has provided tens of millions of dollars in additional funding in disability services. Is it seriously suggested that we should not have funded
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