Page 2823 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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We have been unable to conduct a thorough analysis of its impact on the ACT community, and our constituents have similarly found it obscure. This budget has put the government’s AAA credit rating before everything else, despite the fact that it does not use that rating to make borrowings for infrastructure. The government itself failed to take a triple bottom line approach to the budget cuts and there is no evidence that it considered the social and environmental impact of the cuts in funding. There are harsh and dramatic cuts to education, the environment and housing, especially emergency housing. They have been made without the involvement of the community and their advocates, and the government appears to have abandoned its community engagement strategy, its social plan, its social compact and the community funding policy in the process.
I see little evidence that this budget is one that our children will appreciate, despite the government’s claims, given its unjustified long-term detrimental impact on key social and environmental indicators. By the way, if we had seen the functional review it would have ensured a more informed judgment of this budget and one still might have been obliged to vote against it. I would like to make it explicit that, by voting against the appropriation bill, I am not making a vote of no confidence in the government, although admittedly it is very hard to have confidence in a government which delivers a budget like this in this way. It is a vote of no confidence in the budget and the information that has been provided in its support.
With a minority government, especially one where the Greens had the balance of power, I doubt that we would be facing a budget like this, as initiatives like school closures, plans and the SAC cuts would not and could not have been handled in this manner. So this is the budget of a majority government. It is not explained, it has not been developed in partnership with the people affected, and it does not take any particular care of those people and those parts of our environment that are most vulnerable. It is based on the presumption that the government has no need to listen and knows best. The John Howard government, to whom I referred in the beginning, follows a similar approach. There are many people in Canberra who can now see the unfortunate consequences of a majority government at both levels.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Minister for the Arts) (4.43 am): I will just make some very short concluding remarks, Mr Speaker. The shadow Treasurer commenced his final remarks on this budget by suggesting that it was the worst budget in the history of self-government. I understand that every shadow Treasurer since self-government has described the then budget just debated and about to be passed as the worst budget ever delivered in the ACT. This is the 17th time since 1989 that the shadow Treasurer has stood in his concluding remarks and said, “Mr Speaker, this is the worst budget ever passed in the history of self-government.” I have heard it before and I have no doubt that we will hear it again next year.
This is far from the worst budget that has ever been delivered, debated and passed in this Assembly. This is a good budget. It is certainly a hard and a tough budget, but in this budget the government has taken decisions that have been put off year after year by successive governments since 1989. I will just summarise some of the significant decisions, the hard decisions, the politically courageous decisions that have been taken by this government. I refer to the move to the GFS accounting standard, a decision which
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