Page 2731 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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busway that was never, ever going to go ahead. I think he was the minister when, with FireLink, $5 million was spent on a communications facility that does not exist.
We can go through the list. Every year they come out, but what they are saying to us for next year is: “Don’t worry; trust us. We can’t actually tell you all of the detail of what’s in the budget, but we’ll spend it wisely.” On their previous record of the last nine years, we know that they will not. We know they will find ways to waste it. We know they will find ways to try and get themselves re-elected through government advertising. We know they will continue to waste money. It is a reasonable question that we ask how they are going to spend it.
It is not fiscally responsible. It is not accurate. It is not transparent. It does contain all sorts of examples of wasteful spending, although we know that there would be many more, if they would show some transparency and actually give us some of the detail that we required and requested in order to make our assessments of the budget.
It does need to be said—and we will get to this in other lines—that the $26 million to be spent on the arboretum at a time when you are cutting money for street trees programs goes to the priorities in this budget. It goes to the heart of this government’s priorities: it believes Jon Stanhope’s legacy on the hill is worthy of another $26 million, as opposed to people’s street trees that they value so much.
Right across Canberra—this is something that cuts across all areas of Canberra, I believe—our street trees are something that we value about Canberra. Ask anyone in the street. And here we actually have a choice, because this government is choosing to rip money out of the street trees program, as a saving, but choosing to spend $26 million on the big tree park on the hill, which is Mr Stanhope’s legacy.
So we see that it is not fiscally responsible, not accurate, not transparent; it contains wasteful spending and it contains higher taxes. This is a budget that slugs homebuyers. It slugs homebuyers to the tune, potentially, on the minister’s own answers, upwards of $50,000 and $60,000 per unit. That is not a budget that will encourage infill. That is not a budget that is reasonable for first homebuyers, who are buying many of those units—nor is it reasonable for investors or anyone else buying those units to put such a massive tax slug on them.
It is a budget that is anti family. Not only is there a massive tax on homes, we see car parking is up and bus fares are up. This is a budget that fails all the tests. It fails the test of being fiscally responsible. It fails the test of being accurate. It fails the test of being transparent. It fails to contain wasteful spending. It demonstrates poor and warped priorities. It imposes massive higher taxes, and it does slug the family budget, to the extent that the Treasurer could not even tell us how much it slugs the family budget. But we know that some of those increases amount to hundreds of dollars per year for families.
That is aside from the annual increases, of course. And we saw, during budget week, when we discussed it and when we looked at the numbers, just from a random sample of suburbs—which is reflected right across Canberra—that since this government came to office their rates have gone up upwards of 80 per cent in most suburbs.
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