Page 2110 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
even more consultation with the community and the painful cuts will take place in 2010-11 and beyond.
The critical issue is how the Treasurer has dealt with the preparation of this budget, and, in particular, how the Treasurer has dealt with the emerging and prospective economic environment. The Treasurer told us on Tuesday that she had a plan. She said: “Look, it’s budget paper 3, it starts on page 17. It’s called the budget plan.” But a chapter in a document is not a plan unless it has specific targets to achieve, targets that are outlined, how they will be achieved and when they will be achieved.
What is the reality of the claim of the plan? The Treasurer was repeatedly telling us that all would be revealed in the 2009 budget. Indeed, when addressing the third appropriation, she said it would be pretty small because the budget comes down three months after. That was in February. She said, “Don’t get your hopes up about the third appropriation bill,” which was set in late February. She then said, “The big decisions are going to be taken in the budget.” She said that in early March. And so we waited and we waited for the big decisions, and the big decisions have been deferred. What did we get? No decisions. Instead, we have got a chapter in budget paper 3 headed “The budget plan”, and we have a policy-free period for the next 12 months when, supposedly, the community will tell the government what they should have done.
So let me summarise: seven years of deficits. Next year we will employ an additional 976 public servants so that we can then fire them the following year. We will make no savings next year, and in the outyears we will save $153 million of which $97 million is unspecified. There will be wage restraint, already rejected by the unions, and we will have an efficiency dividend. Again, it is all best summarised by the chart in budget paper 3 on page 19, which has a big fat zero for activity in the year 2009-10, which leads me neatly into community consultation, as the Treasurer has placed much emphasis on this as part of her so-called budget plan.
We have castigated the Stanhope government for its complete failure to conduct effective and timely community consultation, and we now see that, in a desperate attempt to find $100 million of savings between the year 2010-11 and 2012-13, more consultations are planned. The community will be asked, “Where would you cut from the ACT government’s current activities?” What a silly approach this is. It is the responsibility of the government to make these decisions and to outline them in the budget. The budget is the place you outline your plan, not to say that you plan to have a plan. Moreover, this government has already had six months to consult with the community in preparing this budget. Indeed, that would have been the reason for the Treasurer to delay the big actions from February this year to May this year.
This government received many submissions from individuals and a wide range of community organisations in the lead-up to the budget. How do I know? Because I received many of them also, as did my colleagues. I am sure the government received more than any of us. Is this not consultation? I received more than 20, so the government must have received 40 or 60 or 80 or more submissions. They had a number of roundtables, and the government made great store of the Stanhope-Gallagher government ministers engaging in numerous roundtables with
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .