Page 3817 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (10.52): Appropriation Bill 2007-2008 (No 2) appropriates some $36.254 million for additional expenditure initiatives for the 2007-08 financial year. Although the bill appropriates money solely for the current financial year, the expenditure initiatives that are being funded have financial implications beyond this year.
It is, therefore, important to look not only at the actual appropriation in the bill itself but also at the financial commitments that will be required in the forward years and further into the future to maintain the programs funded by this bill. The implications of these expenditure initiatives over the forward years are set out in the supplementary budget papers to the bill. Over the current financial year and the next three financial years, the expenditure initiatives set out in the supplementary budget papers are budgeted at $109.252 million. Approximately 74 per cent of this expenditure is to be for departmental and territory outputs, with the remaining 26 per cent being used for capital expenditure.
I do not intend to go into great detail on the specific expenditure initiatives for each of the various departments. I will leave this discussion for the various shadow ministers on this side of the chamber responsible for these portfolios. However, I would like to make some broad comments about this appropriation and go into some detail on certain items of expenditure that have raised concern both in the estimates hearings of the public accounts committee and elsewhere.
First and foremost, the advent of the second appropriation bill in this financial year, in light of excess revenues from taxation, has shown that the ACT government is firmly committed to a philosophy of big government and its increases in taxation. This bill, combined with the government’s recent opposition to the repeal of its harmful utilities tax, has shown that the government has no intention of providing tax relief to Canberra families, regardless of the financial position of the territory. It has also shown that the alleged necessity for the government’s tax increases was little more than a flimsy pretext to expand the size of government and the tax base in the ACT.
There are many initiatives in this budget that are valuable, and the government will no doubt explain the virtues of these initiatives at length. Unfortunately, although the bill provides for expansions in some useful services, this will be little comfort to those Canberra families who are under increasing financial strain because of the amount of money they are paying, because of their political masters, through rates increases and various other taxes and charges.
The additional money that forms the basis for the expenditure in this appropriation bill is a direct result of the introduction of increases in taxes that have been the policy of the ACT government over the last two years—these increases and charges that have been inflicted on what Labor loves to refer to as working families. It is those same working families that are being asked to outlay more and more to underwrite and fund the extravagant spending patterns of this territory government.
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