Page 1168 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
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The Australian government have managed to do what the Labor Party has found impossible. They have managed to provide higher and higher levels of spending on basic services whilst at the same time taking pressure off Australians with tax cuts, budget surpluses and good economic management. We are one of the best-managed economies in the world and that is the view of groups such as the OECD and many other independent international commentators.
The Labor Party, both in this Assembly and in the federal parliament, can only scratch their heads at this economic performance. They only know one way to deal with budgets. They have not figured out how to rein in spending or to get value for money in their operations, so they jack up taxes, rates and charges. Unfortunately, it is the only approach they seem to be able to embrace.
Budget time in Canberra provides a clear demonstration of the serious disparities between the sound economic management of the Australian government and the unsound economic management of the ACT government. Clearly, it is about time that the ACT government re-examined its runaway spending and took a leaf out of the book of the federal government. Balancing the budget should be achieved without increasing taxes, rates and charges and hurting those people in Canberra who are least able to protect their own position. It should be achieved through greater efficiency and a responsible approach to spending decisions.
It distresses me to see superannuants in this town, of which there are a large number and growing—numbers that will explode in the next several years as the baby boomers hit retirement—knowing that their pensions are going up by CPI and hearing the Chief Minister attempt to convince them that their rates and taxes and charges have to go up by wage price indexation when these people are not enjoying increases at the same level.
The defence provided in this place by the government yesterday was that wages are a big part of the cost of running government and so they have got to whack all the charges up by wage price indexation. But the fact is that wages are only part of the cost of government; they are about half of it. But where is the message of restraint? The attitude is: double the cost to government; pass it on basically to the consumer; pay no regard to the fact that people out there in this community who have planned their retirement, who are basing their future on a certain level of income and pension entitlement, are not in a position to generate more income.
So what do people do in that circumstance? They have to expend capital. They have to take equity loans out on their homes so they can maintain a civilised standard of living, or they rely on their children to help them out with this difficulty. This is because this government has no capacity to rein in its spending. Under this government the public sector has gone from 15,000 to 19,000 people in a time when we are achieving only 0.8 per cent growth in our population. It is time the territory government took stock of what it is doing and started showing a genuine interest in the wellbeing of the ACT community, rather than spending money on every possible cause and icon that comes across the table.
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