Page 1218 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
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The contrast could not be clearer. The federal government has managed its budget well, has cut taxes, has given people opportunities and has increased spending on health, defence, national security and all other areas. We have seen boom times in the ACT as a result. We have seen record low unemployment in Canberra, yet in response to that, in the midst of these boom times, we have a Chief Minister and a government that have so failed to manage their resources that they have to slug Canberrans with hundreds of dollars in extra rates and charges. We are going to be paying more for electricity and water, as well as our extra rates, and we are seeing no better services.
If anything, we are seeing a rundown of services. We see a bus network that is the worst in the country. We see roads that are not being maintained as they should. We see massive school closures. We still see a flood of people moving to the non-government system. We see the mismanagement of our water infrastructure. They are always blaming the drought but they have mismanaged our water to the extent that we will potentially see 80 per cent of our ovals closed because this government has not invested in water infrastructure. It has failed in so many areas and is in stark contrast to the federal government’s budgetary management.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (4.30): I stand to support the motion. I will not be supporting Mr Stanhope’s amendment. We know now that the federal budget this year was extremely well received, perhaps the best-received budget in 11 years. For people on the other side of the chamber to decry that budget and to use that budget as a whipping boy to explain away and excuse away their own deficiencies is simply outrageous.
Look at the comments of noted economic commentators across Australian print media, the Paul Kellys and the Dennis Shanahans, and then at the ABC reporters who have a decent economics and commerce background, Michael Brissenden, the 7.30 Report’s Kerry O’Brien and Cassidy’s comments from the Insiders. Most of the Insiders panels that have appeared in the last two or three weeks in the wake of the budget talk about a budget which has not only brought a degree of windfall to the Australian economy and seems to drought-proof, for want of a better term, the management of the economy for the next couple of years but is responsible as well.
It was not a budget which provided largesse and rewards at the expense of probity of management. It is clearly a budget which is well in the black and remains there. I see the Canberra Times article of 9 May headed “ACT benefits from largesse”. Across the board, we have media praise for the federal government’s budget.
Yet we see Ms MacDonald stand up here today and challenge why we should be celebrating that budget and decrying the fact that GSTs are “not all they are cracked up to be”. Ms MacDonald said here today that GSTs are not all they cracked up to be. What did we have pre Howard? We had the Paul Keating wasteland in terms of economic management and budgetary management in this country. There was no return of revenue to the states.
Mr Seselja: There was a $96 million deficit.
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