Page 2615 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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budget. This is not a small amount of the Treasury’s outlay, yet we are being told they have to go out and find other people to do the job.
They do not, apparently, have any real forecasting ability. They are relying on the commonwealth for that sort of information. Even that makes me somewhat uneasy. It is not that I am doubtful of the competence of the commonwealth, but I would like to see better economic forecasting capability within Treasury. I would have thought that, with the size of their budget, they could actually do some of these things rather than saying, “We need advice, let us go to an external consultant.”
As a result of all of this economic muddling, that has attracted a pre-outlook warning from Standard & Poor’s and produced, in my view, an extravagantly overpriced functional review, we have ended up with the only possible result when a government fails to adhere to sensible economic discipline for four years. We have a horror budget that is likely to be passed some time before sunrise tomorrow. It is a horror budget that introduces harsh revenue-raising measures and adopts an accounting system that fudges the numbers to cushion the real state of the territory’s finances.
Over the last two years, as I look back through the debates, when I have kept saying, “We must really focus on the operational costs of the territory government,” I would get this glossy report saying that they have had surplus budget after surplus budget. They have relied on things such as superannuation gains, knowing full well that improvements were not available, as a consequence of the stock market, to run the day-to-day operations of the territory government. When one looks down the list of increased taxes, inflated charges and newly created levies passed down in this year’s budget, it makes difficult and indeed depressing reading.
The new fire and emergency services levy will cost ACT households an extra $84 per year. The land use permit will cost households at the very least an additional $15 a year. The 30c per kilolitre increase to the water abstraction charge that my leader Mr Stefaniak has focused on will cost households about another $137 per year, notwithstanding grave doubt about the legal basis of that charge, compounded by the reluctance over the last couple of years to see the tabling of all of the legal advice that agencies such as ICRC and ACTEW and the ACT government and the cabinet itself have taken in relation to that charge.
We have seen land rates increase by six per cent. On top of that we have had revaluations. Then we are going to a WPI method of indexation. The real cost to households is going to be savage. Those increases can be anything from $63 to $403 per household. Putting that into perspective, if you look at people in my electorate such as those out at Oakes Estate—and in many cases there are socially disadvantaged people there—they are now going to pay $915 in property charges. That is up from $611 in 2005-06.
In the Chief Minister’s own electorate, the people at Charnwood are now going to be paying $1,021 through these various charges, which will be up from $698. Folk in Banks will now be paying $1,106, which will be up from $762. There is a whopping increase for the new area of Harrison, where they will now pay $1,234—up from $752. There is no other area of our society where people have been hit with this level of increase. Even grocery items have definitely gone up well ahead of inflation in most instances.
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