Page 1172 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
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worsen rapidly in the second and third decades of this century, but more particularly the high costs associated with many new medical procedures and technologies.
The 2006-07 ACT budget provided the highest ever investment in public schools and set health care costs on sustainable growth paths. The government has undertaken major structural reforms to put the territory’s finances on a sustainable footing. The government over the past 5½ years has achieved the following results for the community. These achievements are all the more remarkable given that the commonwealth’s per capita specific purpose payment contributions to high-need services such as hospital services, disability services and housing assistance have decreased by 10 per cent in real terms over the last five years.
Mr Mulcahy made some mention of deficits. The fact is that every deficit that has ever been delivered in the ACT has been delivered by an ACT Liberal government. I notice with interest that Mr Mulcahy continues to draw attention to this issue of deficits when he compares commonwealth performance over the last 10 to 12 years with that of the ACT. In the last 12 years in the Australian Capital Territory there have been four deficits. Those deficits were of $344 million, $170 million, $157 million and $161 million. Those deficits were produced in the years 1995-96, 1996-97, 1997-98 and 1998-99, measured and audited under the Australian accounting standards introduced by the Liberals, an accounting standard introduced by Mrs Carnell, under which she then proceeded to produce the only four deficits that have been produced in the last decade within the ACT.
I am interested that it is Mr Mulcahy, the would-be leader of the Liberal Party, who continues to raise the appalling financial management of the cabinet of which his current leader, Mr Stefaniak, was a member. We know why he keeps drawing attention to this appalling economic management of the Liberal Party—because he wants to continue to undermine Mr Stefaniak’s leadership. We know the knife is out. We know he is just waiting. We saw it just two weeks ago when Mr Stefaniak, seeking to shore up his leadership, removed almost all significant portfolio responsibilities from two people within his party. Who? They are the two people that he has identified as his two backbenchers in a Liberal government: Mr Smyth and Mr Mulcahy. He just whipped their portfolios off them and added injury to insult by then requiring that the shadow Treasurer not have a thing to do with the estimates process—for two years in a row. Mr Smyth did it to Mr Mulcahy last year when Mr Smyth knew the knife was out; that Mr Mulcahy was poised to stab him in the back. Mr Smyth would not have his shadow Treasurer on estimates.
This year we have history repeating itself. The new leader is leader by virtue of the fact that Mr Mulcahy knocked Mr Smyth off. Mr Mulcahy is still waiting in the wings, waiting to knock Mr Stefaniak off. And what was Mr Stefaniak’s response? It was to whip portfolios off him and refuse to allow him anywhere near his responsibilities as shadow Treasurer—in other words, a place on the estimates committee—because he knows that if Mr Mulcahy can get his way through his travails and his difficulties with the Australian Hotels Association inquiry he stands ready to leap at the jugular—and all the time he is shoring up, of course, the support of his other colleagues, as Mr Stefaniak vainly and desperately seeks to—
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