Page 64 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 15 February 2011
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small $34 million rollover to the outyears. The budget review provides further details of the reprofiling exercise.
The territory is progressing well with the delivery of its capital works program. I will publish the December quarter capital works report shortly. However, for the advice of the Assembly, I am pleased to announce that, to the end of December, the territory has spent $274 million of its program, equating to 34 per cent of the funds available for expenditure, which is the best half-year result for the past 10 years.
The revised estimates and forecasts published today are welcome signs that the economy, and the budget, are recovering more quickly than anticipated. There is still, however, no doubt that there are some risks to the budget and there is still a significant task ahead of us to move the budget back into surplus.
There are several challenges and risks to our finances which we will have to be mindful of when putting together the 2011-12 budget, including interest rate increases, easing of the commonwealth stimulus measures, future restraint in commonwealth spending as it seeks to restore its own budget and respond to the Queensland flood crisis, the outcomes of forthcoming enterprise negotiations as unions seek to catch up on previous restraint, and further pressure on the infrastructure and land release program as labour supply and material shortages may be forthcoming.
The territory continues to maintain a strong balance sheet, negative net debt levels, and improving net financial liabilities to support us in these challenges moving forward. The hard work is not yet over and we have still more to do to return our budget to surplus. The budget review forecasts remain consistent with the objectives of the budget plan, in particular, with the commitment to return the budget to surplus. I commend the 2010-11 budget review to the Assembly.
I move:
That the Assembly take note of the paper.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (3.31): The review of the budget for the first six months of the financial year 2010-11 and the response of the ACT Treasurer to this review are both causes for considerable concern. Let me deal with the half-year review of the budget first and note that the December quarter financial report is also pertinent in this context. It appears that the outlook for the ACT budget for 2010-11 has improved slightly, the expected deficit for the year being reduced from $84 million to $6 million.
In other circumstances, this would be good news. A careful examination of these reports, however, does raise some concerns. On the one hand, revenue receipts have increased from $2.9 billion to $3.1 billion for the half-year, which represents an increase of more than $200 million over budget, but, on the other hand, spending has also increased from $2.86 billion to $2.9 billion. This represents an increase of nearly $40 million over budget.
This means that revenue was seven per cent over budget. This increase resulted from higher dividends, higher tax revenue from land-related activities, higher grants from
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