Page 1178 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
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of 4.1 per cent from 2004-05 to 2005-06. Will the ACT government’s next budget still increase our rates by the wage price index rather than the lower CPI? I suspect it will.
Mr Hargreaves: You will have to find out.
MR STEFANIAK: “Bloody oath,” says Mr Hargreaves. Well, there you go.
Mr Hargreaves: On 5 June.
MR STEFANIAK: Indeed. Since the Stanhope Labor government came to office in 2001, our GST payments have increased to $823 million in 2007-08. That is a huge increase—a massive increase of 9.25 per cent a year. It also represents a bit over one quarter of our total revenue base. What has the government been doing with these windfalls? It has spent $450 million on expanding the public service, and for what purpose when it cuts services, closes schools, libraries and shopfronts, and slashes businesses and social services? This is akin to that famous episode of Yes, Minister in which the government is so proud of its hospital with no patients. It certainly had a very efficient and effective administrative bureaucracy, but no patients.
Mr Mulcahy: It could not afford to put patients in.
MR STEFANIAK: Absolutely. Next week the Stanhope government is going to hand down its 2007-08 budget. What will that budget deliver? Will it follow the lead not only of the Howard Liberal government but also previous Liberal governments and deliver a budget that is responsible or will it be one that continues to be self-serving? Will we have more projects like arboretums, Al Grassby statues and prisons which no-one except the Chief Minister wants, or will we have services restored for the benefit of the people of Canberra? Will the Stanhope Labor government hand back to the people of Canberra, through some tax relief, some of the GST windfalls it is enjoying? I doubt it very much. The Chief Minister, while generally attacking the Howard government at every opportunity, has taken credit for all of the Liberal government’s achievements federally.
The ABS this month revealed that the ACT recorded the strongest growth in building approvals in the country in March 2007 and that growth in retail turnover outstripped the national average for the year to March. The number of job advertisements appearing in ACT newspapers grew by 10 per cent over the year to April 2007, according to the latest ANZ job advertisement series released earlier this year. What are the achievements of the Howard government for which the ACT has derived so much benefit?
Mr Hargreaves: Nothing.
MR STEFANIAK: I have just read them out, John. Listen. Thanks to the federal government’s work-creating opportunities, unemployment nationally is just over four per cent. It is under three per cent here, and we have not seen that since the seventies—indeed, the late sixties. Thanks to the federal government, 80 per cent of Australians now have a marginal tax rate of 30c or less in the dollar. Only 30 per cent had that in 1996. According to a barometer published by Price Waterhouse, small to medium-sized businesses are enjoying a strong increase in growth and profits of
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