Page 3330 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 October 2006

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Ayes 8		Noes 5
Mr Barr	Mr Hargreaves	Mrs Dunne	Mr Stefaniak
Mr Berry	Ms MacDonald	Mr Mulcahy
Mr Corbell	Ms Porter	Mr Pratt
Mr Gentleman	Mr Stanhope	Mr Seselja

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

Original question put:

That Mr Pratt’s motion be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Ayes 5		Noes 8
Mrs Dunne	Mr Stefaniak	Mr Barr	Mr Hargreaves
Mr Mulcahy		Mr Berry	Ms MacDonald
Mr Pratt		Mr Corbell	Ms Porter
Mr Seselja		Mr Gentleman	Mr Stanhope

Question so resolved in the negative.

Questions without notice

Budget

MS MacDONALD: My question is to Mr Stanhope in his capacity as Treasurer. Can the Treasurer tell the Assembly what is the importance to the ACT budget and consequently to the Canberra community of maintaining a sustainable revenue stream? What would be the impact on the delivery of services if the government were to abandon significant revenue measures such as the fire and emergency services levy, the water abstraction charge, the utilities network facilities charge and the land tax regime?

MR STANHOPE I thank Ms MacDonald for the question. It is indeed a timely question, particularly in an environment or circumstance where the Liberal Party have just exposed the consequences, as I think we are all aware, of underresourcing essential services such as emergency services. We have seen that, I think, through the debate we have endured over the last hour in terms of the enormous investment in emergency services and firefighting that we have engaged in over the last five years to redress the enormous gap in services that were a feature of the time of the Liberal Party in government—indeed, of Mr Smyth’s stewardship as minister responsible for the emergency services authority.

Mr Corbell, the current minister, referred in his concluding comments to the fact that we inherited an emergency services budget across the board of around $38 million which we have increased over the last five years to $77 million a year. Why have we done that? We have done that because of the routine underservicing which was a feature of the previous government. There were areas of government service delivery that they simply ignored, such as emergency services. That we are now funding emergency services to the

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