Page 1635 - Week 05 - Thursday, 8 May 2008
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at new expenditure initiatives in the budget. They show us that much of this money is being wasted and that the government has squandered an ample opportunity to reform its tax system. Budgeting decisions are not primarily a matter of choosing between front-line services and tax cuts. They are a matter of showing restraint in areas of expenditure that are more questionable, and if we look closely at this budget we see that these areas abound.
Before I go on to that, I will just make some mention of the matter that was discussed in question time, the $2 million for additional maintenance, the incremental addition to existing allocations that the minister referred to in response to a question. Whilst that is welcome and it makes up a very substantial part of the issues raised with my office over the state of the city, I do note that, in the 2006-07 budget, increased repairs and maintenance capacity was an amount of $5 million, expanding on the existing annual maintenance program for the territory’s road network and infrastructure assets.
So I would contend that, to be putting in less in terms of additional outlays for maintenance in the current climate, given the fact that most people I talk to in the community are not convinced that we have at all reached a standard that we previously enjoyed in terms of the maintenance of our city, is short-sighted and something that the government has taken the red pen to, despite the fact that it is one of the biggest issues that affect residents in my electorate.
Going back to the issue of questionable expenditure, the fact that the government is building itself up for the election is clear from the large staffing increases that have occurred in the Chief Minister’s Department in the past year. Instead of focusing on core services, the government has chosen to employ more advisers and spin doctors for ACT government policies. One of the department’s objectives in the 2007-08 budget was to develop and embed improved arrangements for strategic human resources and, as part of its human resources, the government budgeted for an additional 22 full-time equivalent staff in the Chief Minister’s Department. I digress to note that, on the issues related to the territory’s human resource system that Dr Foskey pursued and I pursued, still, many, many months after the event, I have not heard of any resolution of those errors.
In estimates committee hearings on 27 June 2007, Mr Stefaniak asked the acting chief executive if there was any intention of further increases in staff. She replied rather cryptically:
Given that the budget footprint remains the same, I think we would be pretty much on the same path—unless staff get cheaper.
However, the result was not on the same path and was not as strategic as was planned. The department instead ended up with an additional 42 full-time equivalent staff, an increase of 33.8 per cent in full-time equivalent staff, in a single year. Despite this blow-out in staff over and above the already large budgeted increase, in 2008-09 the government has again budgeted for a further increase of another 25 full-time equivalent staff, an increase of another nine per cent.
It is not merely the Chief Minister’s own department who are the beneficiaries of ACT taxpayers’ funds. Over the next four financial years, the government will spend
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