Page 1100 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 29 May 2007
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MR SPEAKER: Order! Members of the opposition will come to order. Chief Minister, stick to the subject matter or we might as well move on to the next question.
MR STANHOPE: I will conclude on the point that the government’s position in relation to that is reasonable and reflects reasonably to the community the real cost, the true cost, of government service delivery.
MR MULCAHY: I have a supplementary question for the Treasurer. What impact will using the WPI as an inflator have on the generally accepted overall inflator, the CPI, and therefore on the ACT economy?
MR STANHOPE: I do not have a percentage effect, but it will have a very minor effect. That is actually illustrated in answers and examples I have given in relation to the difference overall between applying the CPI as opposed to the wage price index. At the heart of the distinction is a decision that this government took last year: that in the delivery of services to the community it would reflect the actual and real cost of their delivery and not provide subsidies on the side, as the opposition did in government to continue to disguise the actual and real cost of providing services to the community. Last year, we took a decision as a government—a decision that you in government never had the courage to take—to do just that, to ensure that in the provision of services there was some link with reality in relation to the community’s capacity or the government’s capacity to pay.
Mr Mulcahy, on behalf of the Liberal Party, suggests that they would return to the days of saying, “It costs more than this to deliver but we will somehow absorb the extra cost.” They would provide a service taking into account the CPI which does not reflect the true cost of the provision of the service because the true cost is the cost of wages in almost every government service. We all know that. What is the cost of service delivery? The cost of service delivery is wages. The cost of education is the teachers. The cost of health is doctors and nurses.
Mr Mulcahy: It is only part of the cost.
MR STANHOPE: It is only half the cost! That shows what he knows about the government’s accounts. The cost of teachers is half the cost of education, Mr Mulcahy says, displaying his ignorance. The cost to government, to the community, of the delivery of services is, by and large, the cost of wages. Mr Mulcahy says that the Liberal Party, in government, would be prepared to fudge it, that it would be prepared to pretend that it could absorb it, particularly in an environment where it would be abolishing taxes and charges left, right and centre, that it would provide those services consistent with a ratio or a regime based on the CPI as opposed to the wage price index and ignore the difference, whatever it would be, because it would only be little.
To take it back to your argument, the greater it is, the greater the burden to government; the greater the extent to which the costs are not recouped, the greater the extent to which the government must find the moneys for that service delivery somewhere else. You go around continuing to insist that you will be abolishing the fire levy, that you do not accept the wage price index, that you do not like the payroll
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