Page 1407 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 5 June 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR STANHOPE: The reason—the reasons have been explained regularly and quite constantly—that last year’s budget was in the form that it was as a result, as we all know, of a raft of decisions not that were taken most specifically over the previous 16 years but essentially as a result of decisions that were not taken; the decisions that Mr Smyth did not take, the decisions that Mr Stefaniak did not take, the decisions that Mrs Dunne as a senior adviser did not advise, in seven years of Liberal Party government.
They were decisions that led us over that period to fund, for instance by way of example, health at a level 24 per cent above the national average. They were decisions that were not taken in relation to public education that led to a situation in which 32 per cent of our schools were not being utilised—32 per cent of our schools or our school capacity was not being utilised. They led to a situation in relation to our growing, burgeoning superannuation liability where within less than 30 years our annual cash requirement to meet our superannuation liabilities would have grown from $60 million a year to $450 million a year—as a result of decisions that were not taken.
In relation to health alone, that difference between our revenue effort and our expenditure decisions not only led to a circumstance where we were expending on health, our largest single budget item, at a level 24 per cent above the national average at the point of last year’s budget but which, if we had continued expending at that level, would by the year 2020, in 13 years time, have led to a circumstance where 50 per cent of our entire budget would have been needed to meet that incremental increase in the cost of health care and delivery of health care to this community—20 per cent; by 2020, 50 per cent. It is unsustainable. We all know it is unsustainable. But nobody else acted. Nobody else moved on it.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Draw a connection with the question, please.
MR STANHOPE: The question was: why did we introduce the revenue measures we did last year? We introduced the revenue measures last year as a result of decisions that were not taken and as a result of the need for us as a community to better ensure that our revenue effort and our revenue efforts better met the decisions that we had taken collectively in relation to the funding of government services. It is quite simple; it is a simple equation that revenue effort has to broadly meet expenditure decisions.
There has been an enormous mismatch over 17 or 18 years of self-government between our revenue effort and the level at which we invest it in community services, and it was simply unsustainable. I am concerned about the future. This government was concerned about the future. We were concerned about ensuring that we had the capacity to meet this community’s continuing needs for world-class health facilities, for world-class education facilities, for world-class government services—and we can only do that with a strong balance sheet and sustainable surpluses into the future. That is what we sought to achieve. That is why we took the hard decisions, the politically unpalatable decisions, that we took last year—in order to achieve that sort of future for the people of the ACT. (Time expired.)
It being 3.00 pm, questions were interrupted pursuant to the order of the Assembly.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .