Page 3827 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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broader—talking to young people, talking to the people who are affected by the changes that the government makes.
In relation to the construction cost overruns—and this is probably not just peculiar to the ACT government; I am sure the private sector is also experiencing these construction cost overruns—it is very difficult to see how this would not occur in a place where accommodation is so difficult to find that currently a huge number of our motels and other places that are meant to be for tourists and visitors to the city are actually occupied by construction workers who cannot find anywhere else to live. I imagine that this adds to the construction bill quite considerably because it is not going to be the employers who cover those costs; they will be passing those on.
The committee also looked at the Commissioner for the Environment. It soon becomes a sustainability budget. We were very pleased there were adequate resources. We were told that the scope of that position would expand very, very considerably. It is not just one extra portfolio with the sustainability added, which means responsibility for the climate change strategy implementation; it may also mean responsibility in relation to water catchments and other water issues and perhaps the conservator.
This is becoming a position that may be more than a full-time position. There is already a full-time position after it was a part-time one. Now that it is full time it might be a double full-time position. We would be very concerned that the position is not loaded with too much work and, if it is, it always has adequate resources.
On the whole, though, there are some good measures in this budget. I hope the network consultation on ACTION takes into account what it has been told because it is very apparent there are still quite a lot of holes in that network and they are still not providing the service that people want.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra—Leader of the Opposition) (11.27): This bill can be summarised quite simply. It is just another example of the Stanhope Labor government’s inability to manage its finances. It seems only yesterday—I think it was about 12 weeks or so ago—that we were debating the 2007-08 budget. That was at the sittings in late August. And here we are some three months later—barely three months later—debating a second appropriation bill.
This government has a somewhat unenviable record of an abject inability—indeed, infamy—in revenue forecasting. Again this is brought out in the estimates report. The government has raised infamy to an art form. It is infamous for getting its budget hopelessly wrong each year; its budgeting is way out year after year. It is infamous for raising taxes and cutting services. It is infamous, too, for crying poor. We have seen that in the last few years—and suddenly all this extra money appears. It is also infamous for wasting money on self-indulgent icons and for cutting infrastructure projects to make them fit their original budgets. It is also infamous in its refusal to put any of these revenue windfalls back into the pockets of ordinary Canberrans through tax relief. And it is infamous for getting its priorities wrong on many fronts on a regular basis.
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