Page 1321 - Week 05 - Thursday, 31 May 2007
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assessment of the merits of the services, we can see that the government cannot even sustain the services they are currently delivering. This is in fact quite extraordinary. Here we have a government which has imposed massive increases in taxes and charges desperately trying to get itself back in the black. They are taxing anything they can lay their hands on, but they just cannot keep up with their runaway spending. We can see from the figures—they are there in black and white—that this government’s spending binge is out of control and is not sustainable. We do not have sustainable high class services to the ACT community. Instead, we have deficient services and unsustainable levels of spending.
Mr Corbell: Tell us the services you are going to reduce.
MR MULCAHY: The first thing, of course, that Mr Corbell needs to get on top of is efficient management. We saw what the Chief Minister thought of the way he managed planning in this city and the cries of joy I am hearing from all over the property sector in the ACT. They said, “Hallelujah.” I have to say they are all praising the Chief Minister. I will give him credit. They are saying, “At last he dumped the planning minister. We might be able to get a few things done.” It is not all about cutting money. It is actually also about management, and we have seen today with the rather poor defence of the health department that a lot of it is just simply bad management and poor leadership.
But why am I going on about accounting methods and GFS and AAS? Why am I going into the nitty-gritty of how to read a budget? Surely the government already knows this. Surely they know that they are supposed to be using the accounting method that is recommended by their own Treasury and their own budgets. You would think so, but unfortunately this is not the case. The Chief Minister and Treasurer would have us believe that there has never been a Labor government deficit in the last two years. He really is kidding us.
Indeed, not only did Mr Stanhope deny ever having had a deficit budget. He went into a frenzy, issuing a bizarre media release saying that these were “misleading” and “preposterous” claims, and saying that any talk of a deficit must be a result of a lack of mathematical capacity. If you have a few spare minutes, I commend a read of the Chief Minister’s release yesterday. It is the best laugh you will get all day.
Of course, this is a pretty standard tactic from the Chief Minister. Whenever any legitimate criticism is levelled at his government, especially one of his own portfolios, he decides that he has to go on the attack and try to suppress any dissent. Mr Corbell, I would have thought, could relate to the suppression of dissent because he got the chop as soon as he questioned a few things.
The Chief Minister goes into a rage and tears down straw men left and right. He argues against statements that were never made and against criticism that never existed. He cites promises that were never made. He does that time and time again. But does he address the criticisms that were made? Did his press release make any mention of the different accounting methods or which one he was using? Did he make any attempt to justify his calculations? Of course he did not.
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