Page 2086 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
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a cut to shopping centre upgrades; a $4 million cut to playground upgrades; a multimillion dollar cut to the Emergency Services Authority; a $17.4 million cut to climate change funding—a $17.4 million cut to climate change and environmental funding; a reduction of the Treasurer’s advance by $16 million—(Time expired.)
MR SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Porter?
MS PORTER: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Chief Minister, this paints quite a dire situation. What other implications would there be with such cuts?
MR STANHOPE: There would be some very significant other implications from the cuts proposed by the Liberal Party in the election and from which they have not resiled. We expect now in the alternative budget that we will have delivered to us in a few minutes time a reiteration by Mr Seselja that he stands by these cuts.
So what were some of the other cuts and what would be the consequences of them? I am happy to table at the conclusion of my answer the full list—the $50 million list accepting, of course, that it is $100 million short of the target that we would need to achieve. It is quite relevant to consider, in the context of the philosophy and the nature of this particular government, what else they proposed to cut. They propose to cut $6 million from our program to install new street lights and to replace street lights. Consistent with this, or course, he proposed to actually reduce finding for the CCTV rollout program and engine immobiliser program—actually, a program designed to make older people in our community most particularly feel safer.
Just to give some indication of the nature of his support for the community generally and the nature of the cuts that the Liberal Party thinks are reasonable, the Liberal Party proposed to cut that fund within the ACT government from which we provide those occasional payments to charities on their particular fund-raising days. I refer to the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Red Shield Appeal, Legacy and Down Syndrome and others that are funded out of our community support fund that was to be completely abolished. No more donations to the Red Shield; no more donations to the Salvation Army; no more donations to those community groups around our town that do such a fantastic job.
That was just a shortlist of the list of cuts that the Liberal Party proposed, which they must repeat today. They have not resiled from them. This was put to Mr Seselja today by Mr Solly and he actually maintained, through his response to that, the suggestion that these are still part of the agenda.
On top of that, as we heard yesterday, but they then resiled from it and denied it immediately, they had proposed to abandon the major projects unit. They do. They proposed to cut the complete policy capacity or branch from the Chief Minister’s Department. It is one of the most significant policy areas in the central department. The policy branch or division within the Chief Minister’s Department is to be abolished. Major projects and facilitation is to be abolished. Those are the sorts of initiatives that it was proposed would be abandoned, including the capital upgrades funding for schools. All of those schools that actually annually throughout—
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