Page 1949 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
office in 2001, the budget was roughly $2 billion. It was a tick over $2 billion in that financial year. Even with the downturn that we are seeing, we will see the budget grow to $3.8 billion of revenue in 2012. That is a significant amount of money by any stretch. That is almost double the money that they had in their first budget—almost double. So they are using the short-term hit to revenue from the global downturn as an excuse for running deficits even when the economy comes back and even when we expect revenue to grow in the property sector, in GST and in the other areas.
Treasury is saying we are going to have a bonanza: “We’re going to be back, basically, to where we predicted we would be last year. We’re just going to be about a year behind, so we are basically going to come back.” It is going to be a significant short-term drop, but after that it is going to come back. What this government is telling us in this budget is that, no matter how much it comes back, they will spend more. In that fourth year they will still rack up a real deficit of $150 million with revenue of $3.8 billion. So you have got boom revenues again. You have got double what you started with, and you still cannot manage it. That goes to a fundamental point—perhaps that is why Andrew Barr wanted the job—of being able to manage spending.
There are plenty of decisions that the government takes that we simply have to take on trust. We are not there for every contract signing; we cannot examine every piece of expenditure. But we know that there is waste, and we have identified waste. Of course, when we identified that waste, this government said it was outrageous. Making those savings is outrageous and will mean the loss of jobs and it is unnecessary, they said, but they were completely wrong. We have heard a lot of the commentary in terms of who knew what when. What everyone knew was that there was a downturn coming. I do not think anyone would deny that when we went to the election last year everyone in our community should have known there was a downturn coming. We had seen some pretty significant shocks in the financial markets before that time. Did we know the extent of it? No, we did not. That has unfolded over the past few months, but we knew there was a downturn coming.
What do you do when you know that there is a slowdown coming? You exercise restraint; you exercise prudence; you look at areas of government expenditure which clearly can be saved without any effect—
Mr Barr: Like the EPIC board fees?
MR SESELJA: Madam Deputy Speaker, it is difficult to hear, but I will touch on that. That is his great microeconomic reform. The microeconomic reform put forward by the would-be Treasurer is to save $50,000 on board fees for EPIC. That is the great saving—$50,000. You could not pay an APS4 or APS5 with that. With oncosts it would be much more than that. For that you are supposedly getting a board of experts, and he says: “This is the great saving. That’s where we can find the savings.” Well, it is good that Andrew Barr is on the case—$50,000.
Mr Barr: Well, if you cannot even come at that saving, I look forward to your speech tomorrow, Zed, outlining how you will save $150 million, if you cannot even save $50,000.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .