Page 903 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 24 February 2009
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not had the sense and, may I add, the strength to reform the budget for government service delivery three years ago, had the Liberal opposition had their way, the ACT budget would be in deficit by hundreds of millions of dollars. Alternatively, government services and employments would have been decimated.
Madam Deputy Speaker, it is quite ironic that the opposition is trying to have it both ways—it opposes structural reform and commits to forgoing revenues, yet it wants to talk about and, in fact, is concerned about the budget position. Its actions simply do not match its utterances. This government has restructured the territory finances without compromising the services it delivers. In fact, services in priority areas have been enhanced. Expenditure has been more tightly controlled and efficiency gains have been directed to the front line priority services.
The revenue measures introduced by this government were necessary, justifiable and reasonable, yet they were opposed by the Liberal opposition. As an example, the Liberals sought to abolish the fire and emergency service levy, a levy introduced in 2006-07 budget to offset just some of the costs of fire and emergency services. The levy provides a significant revenue of around $23 million forecast in 2008-09. The revenue from this levy is used to fund provision of emergency services within the ACT. Since 2001, the government has increased expenditure on fire and emergency services by around 120 per cent. If the Liberal opposition had their way, the budget bottom line would either take another $25 million hit or our fire and emergency capacity would be reduced by $25 million. This is just one example, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The opposition’s commitments to forgo revenue run into more than $70 million. As the Treasurer noted, the task for us in the next and future budgets will be to chart a path back to a surplus operating position over the medium term. Prudent financial management is needed to continue to manage the budget and to deliver on its policy priorities. Madam Deputy Speaker, it is fortunate at times when prudence and fiscal responsibility are required that the ACT’s budget is not in the hands of those that would not put the ACT economic future before political point-scoring.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.48): It is a pleasure to speak to this very important issue today, and I thank Mr Hanson for bringing it forward. It is important that we reflect on the state of the ACT budget. Of course, it is quite a challenge to get detailed and up-to-date figures out of this government, but it is fair to say that we are headed into deficit. We are probably already in deficit, and the question is how big is that deficit for this year and how big will the massive forecast deficits actually be for coming years.
We would not be surprised, of course, if the numbers that have been provided to date actually understate the size of the deficit. We need to go back a step—partly to respond to what Ms Burch said—and we need to actually look at how the government has got to this point. This is a government that refuses to take responsibility for its actions. We saw that in the good times—in the very, very good times that we have just had—when this government was receiving hundreds of millions of dollars—in fact, billions of dollars—in extra revenue. It was not just billions of dollars every year. Every year it would budget for significantly more money, and it would get more than
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