Page 2618 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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We will talk about the TAMS budget later, but you only have to drive down Adelaide Avenue, as I regularly do. Somebody said to me the other day: imagine you are a motorcyclist riding at night in this town. There are holes in that road now that are life threatening. If you live here and drive in daylight hours you know how to duck and weave, but imagine a tourist driving down Adelaide Avenue at night and not seeing those trenches that are appearing, that have been there for weeks. We are not even getting a high standard of service on our main arterial roads, yet we are being told: pay more and more—because you expect too much.
In conjunction with this exercise in revenue raising—highway robbery in my view—the Treasury department has, of course, as I have acknowledged, finally seen the sense and brought the ACT into line with the rest of Australia in its budget reporting. Well, has it? Sure, the accounting treatment is now being used out of GFS, but there are anomalies in the way GFS is presented in this year’s budget. It still tilts the numbers in the government’s favour. I believe that the projected realisation on superannuation gains, which are in fact not available to the territory for day-to-day operational costs, mask the true position. For that reason, I believe the true deficit for this year’s budget is, in fact, in the order of $147.5 million.
We have had much debate across here about the methods of presenting accounts. But, by any measure, the fact is that the territory is still spending more than it is earning and the problems are still inherent within the system. We are definitely not out of the woods. That is a scary thought, given the level of the charges being imposed on the people of the ACT. Mr Stanhope will have you believe that the ACT is booming and leading the way in economic prosperity. He will cast aside any suggestion that there is anything wrong.
The case may often seem convincing, with low unemployment, a rising number of newspaper ads, retail turnover and the like, but you have to look at the figures in context. We must remind Mr Stanhope that the ACT economy is part of a much larger and much more influential economy—the Australian economy. We cannot argue that the ACT broad territory figures for economic performance are not positive, but it is certainly not acceptable to say that this is an isolated effect caused by the expertise of the territory government. In fact, we owe the benefit of what has happened in this territory largely to the effective leadership of the Australian government and the economic management of the Howard government.
Mr Stanhope: No!
MR MULCAHY: Mr Stanhope dismisses that, but the Financial Times in London has published an editorial on this matter. I will read their words. It says:
What can you say about an economy that is a textbook case of good policies, well executed? That is the challenge facing the authors of the latest survey of Australia by the OECD, which struggles to find any serious blemishes in the country’s recent performance …
The list of achievements is impressive. After years of sustained growth, Australia enjoys higher living standards than all of the Group of Seven economies except the US. Unemployment is at a 30-year low … the federal budget is solidly in surplus—
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