Page 1592 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2011
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discussion about our budget, the needs of our community and how we pay for them. There is very little discretionary spending in the ACT budget for ministers. There is very little capacity for ministers to say, “This is what I want to do; this is something new that I’ve wanted to do.” So much of the budget is already predetermined into delivering core services to the community. I reject any view that there is any excessive waste or lack of priorities in terms of the spending within our recurrent spend.
It is an area that we have gone through with fine-toothed combs in looking for efficiencies, and we will be doing so in this year’s budget as well, in order to pay for any new spending that the budget outlines. It is time, as parties in this place, that we do lift the level of debate around this, that we do have a willingness by those opposite to acknowledge that there may in the future be a need to raise additional revenue if we are going to pay for all the services that we need to pay for.
I can certainly tell you, Mr Smyth, that from my point of view, and from my time as Treasurer, if historians are even slightly interested in reviewing it when I am no longer here—which I doubt, but say they were—I have been accused of having boring budgets; they are that fiscally disciplined. I have done press conferences where the media have said, “This isn’t a very exciting budget; it’s a bit boring.” It is boring because it is fiscally disciplined and I have been trying to deal with the shocks that our budget received in 2008 and return it to a surplus position as soon as I can. I think that is the right thing to do, but it is because of the fiscal discipline of this government that we are in a position where we can do that.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (3.57): Budget time, of course, is fast approaching and it is appropriate that we have a general discussion about the level of public expenditure. It was interesting, though, hearing about the last few years. Every April seems to be the timing for this discussion. But that is okay; I believe it has a level of appropriateness.
No doubt this issue will be revisited extensively over the next couple of months. The key questions for discussion are: what should the ACT’s fiscal stance or fiscal policy be? How soon should we be aiming to return to surplus and what level of expenditure reduction is justified to meet that end? In other words, what level of fiscal rectitude is required?
We probably all agree that the fiscal stance and the revenue and expenditure decisions that make up that position are absolutely critical to the ongoing prosperity of the ACT. Unlike other jurisdictions or economies, the ACT is very much subject to the commonwealth government decisions. This places us in a unique position that adds an additional challenge but can offer some opportunities.
As the Treasurer has indicated, we have recently suffered setbacks in the allocation of GST revenue. This will add to the challenge of providing all the services Canberrans expect from government. As was also said, this has been on top of losses suffered through the global financial crisis.
All of us here in this place have different policies and priorities and would spend public money differently. The Greens are committed to a balanced budget over the
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