Page 2824 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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no government has previously taken. It should have been taken in all the years the Liberal party were in power. It should have been taken each of the seven years that the Liberal party were in government but they did not take it. It has been taken now and we have debated this issue.
It is not a decision that any government takes lightly and has never taken lightly, because it does not, in its standard, reflect particularly well or favourably, as we see in this particular instance. Under the Australian accounting standard there is a surplus of $170 million. Under the GFS there is a deficit of $91 million. If you were in government and had a choice, what would you choose—an accounting standard that reflects a surplus of $173 million or an accounting standard that reflects a deficit of $91 million? We decided. And it is a hard decision. It is a decision that you were not prepared to take in government, but we have taken it because it does reflect the real underlying budget position.
We acknowledge, and have been prepared to say openly, in acknowledgement of our budgeting practice and history, that we currently expend on all government service delivery at a rate of 20 per cent above the Australian average and that it is unsustainable. This is an admission, to some extent, that the emperor has no clothes. We have consistently since 1989 expended on government services at the rate of 20 per cent above the national average, and it is unsustainable. The starkest example of its unsustainability is reflected in our health expenditure, increasing over the last five years at around 10 per cent a year.
If we continue the previous level of expenditure on health, by 2020 50 per cent of our entire budget would have been devoted to health. That, of course, would have allowed only 50 per cent for all other government service delivery. Currently, 25 per cent of our budget is expended on health. Within 15 years it would have been 50 per cent at current rates of annual increase in expenditure on health. That was and is unsustainable—everybody in this place knows it is unsustainable—and we have acted to address that issue whilst meeting the needs of an ageing population and incrementally increasing demand for health services.
We have addressed the fact that 30 per cent of our public school system is underutilised. We have heard during this week the views of the Leader of the Opposition in relation to excess school capacity. We know what the position of the Liberal Party was in 1990 when it announced its decision to close 25 schools, its justification and its rationale. Of course, there is a very eerie similarity with the justification and the rationale which this government is using, except the Liberal Party then failed in the face of public disquiet and division within the Assembly and did not conclude or persist with the reform process that it initiated then. It simply did not carry it through. It wilted and it baulked at the first hurdle and it did not achieve the reform which we are now seeking to achieve through the vision of 2020.
We saw it in relation to superannuation. There has not been a single government in a single budget since self-government that has not discussed, known and conceded within the cabinet room that we could not afford or sustain the level of contribution for employee superannuation; not a single government in a single budget cabinet has conceded that it was sustainable. Between now and 2025, there will be a 700 per cent increase in the annual requirement, an increase by 2025 that would have led to the
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