Page 2488 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 22 August 2006
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MR SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (5.28): I accept the need to address some underlying problems with the funding of government services in the ACT. I might question the benchmarks being applied and the criteria used. I certainly believe that the government’s priorities are not farseeing and have all the hallmarks of a panicked response, rather than the thorough analysis of the report from the Costello review should have been subjected to. I would have preferred this issue to have had community and expert input.
If there is one core commitment that the government has abandoned in this budget, it is the social plan. It is worth reminding the government what that is; that is, the recognition that, while Canberra is generally a wealthy population, not everyone has shared in this success. We as a people, and especially our government, have a duty to assist those amongst our community who need our help. Indeed, as the public response to the threatened eviction of the Narrabundah long-stay park residents indicates, many Canberrans see it as part of our core value system that we tackle the hard social problems such as homelessness, real and potential. I commend the ACT government on taking that one up. That indeed is the spirit of the social plan.
The Chief Minister says in his forward to the social plan:
With so much going for us, it would be easy to rest on our laurels. But that would be a mistake.
Yet this is the basis of his budget, reiterated over and over again: “We are so healthy, wealthy and wise that the government can afford to spend less on maintaining these standards.” Why not let our standards fall? Our high standards have, until now, been called our strengths. This budget is squandering the strengths of the ACT rather than building on them.
We are apparently being benchmarked against the lower spending states, without regard to the quality of services they provide and perhaps without the realisation that our economic, not to mention our social and environmental, sustainability rests on precisely that investment in our greatest resource, our children and communities—the investment which is threatened by many of the cost-cutting measures apparently recommended by the Costello report and adopted in this budget. Yet the government says we need to do this to ensure the financial viability of the ACT government. The Chief Minister says that our children will thank us for it. I doubt that they will be thankful for the lower standards they inherit, be they in education, health or the environment. I think they will be saddened that their parents and the people they elected did not take greater responsibility and care for the community and environment which they inherit.
In the context of the social plan, the most alarming element of this budget is that there seems to have been no analysis of the social impact of the changes that the budget will make. I will address some of these impacts under particular lines later in the debate, but the cuts to SAAP, the supported accommodation assistance program, and the fact that even those people making the cuts did not know the depth of the impact they would have, are one example among many and are damning.
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