Page 891 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 24 February 2009
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global economic crisis. However, it is quite clear that this government has failed to prepare the ACT economy sufficiently, so that it is robust enough to face the bad times. It has squandered the good times.
In 2001, the government inherited an incredibly strong budget position from the former Liberal government. We know that the economy, on the back of the property boom, has done extremely well over the last seven years. We know that the revenue boom is of such proportions that it is $1.6 billion over and above what had been budgeted for in successive ACT budgets. So it is $1.6 billion on top of what we had expected. But where has it gone?
The tragedy for the ACT is that the Stanhope-Gallagher government has squandered that bonus that we have received. The government has enjoyed unprecedented prosperity—prosperity that no other ACT government has had the luxury of. We have had windfall revenues, through every stream of revenue imaginable—the GST, stamp duty, commonwealth grants, property tax, dividends and interest payments. So all of this money has been coming in—$1.6 billion over and above what we had expected—but we have completely squandered the good times and not anticipated the bad times. The minister, with her economic cycle, perhaps should have anticipated this.
So the $1.6 billion which should have helped to prepare us has been frittered away, and unfortunately this government has spent wildly. I will give as an example what happened at the last election. The ACT Liberals went to the election with a policy where we identified savings, and this government scoffed at it. They did not want savings; they just wanted to spend, spend, spend and waste, waste, waste. So while we identified a number of savings, you refused to do so. This government has got itself into a position where, because of its own actions—
Ms Gallagher interjecting—
MR HANSON: Madam Assistant Speaker, could the clock be stopped while the minister has a personal conversation?
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Please, minister.
MR HANSON: Thank you. Because of your failure to address the economy’s strengths and to harness that, your options are now limited. The revenue has dried up, so what are you going to do? You are going to have to cut or delay programs or run massive deficits which are going to put us into debt for years to come.
You have brought down these budgets in the time that you have been in government. The opposition believes, and I think the Canberra community believes, that you have misplaced priorities, be it with closed schools, statues, the waste that was FireLink, Rhodium—and I notice that a document was tabled today with respect to some more of the waste that has gone into that business—the single-lane GDE, the arboretum, closed libraries, reducing access to people’s services, the fiasco which was hospital pay parking, the secret functional review that we do not get to see, and the list goes on.
During the boom times for the ACT, during the past few years, the Stanhope-Gallagher government has failed to position the economy properly, so that
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