Page 85 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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sustaining quality services to the Canberra community and supporting confidence in the ACT economy. Doing otherwise would cause harm to the economy and to the community’s wellbeing. I commend the 2011-12 budget review to the Assembly. I move:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.00): We have just sat through a very long-winded speech from the Treasurer. It is a speech that has very little detail in it. It is a speech that offers very little that would give people confidence this government actually has a handle on how to return this budget to surplus. The sad fact is that the 2011-12 budget said there would be a $36 million deficit. According to the 2011-12 budget review, the budget is now $181 million in deficit. And guess what? None of it is Andrew Barr’s fault. It is everybody else’s fault. It is external conditions. It is the federal government. It is Tony Abbott. He is not even there, but it is all his fault. This is a speech from a Treasurer who has nothing to offer.
This is a speech from a Treasurer who does not have a fundamental plan to return the budget to surplus and to secure us against downturns into the future because, like all Labor treasurers in this place, this is a Treasurer who is almost entirely reliant on federal government expenditure and the housing market, the property market, to deliver him his surpluses.
We have warned against that dependence for a long, long time. Yet again, our warnings have gone unheeded. The result of failure to take those warnings is quite clear in the budget review document today—a deficit of $181 million. It does not get better. Next year the deficit for the 2012-13 year was to be $23 million. It is now $154 million. Then the Treasurer would have us believe that in the 2013-14 financial year, miraculously we are going to have a $180 million turnaround in a short year and it will be a $28 million surplus.
No-one in their right mind believes that. The problem is that this government got addicted to GST. This government got addicted to property tax. The problem is that when you have a single addiction of any kind, it will turn and bite you and it has turned and bitten this government.
It is not going to get any better, Madam Assistant Speaker, because we have had a Treasurer and a former Treasurer who will not do the job. Do you remember that we asked the Chief Minister whether she had visited the Grants Commission, stuck up for the ACT and made the case? Her answer in this place on 13 October 2009 was, “No, I have not.” We asked in the public accounts committee whether the Treasurer had gone and visited Messrs Brumby and Greiner who were conducting the GST review. The exchange was as follows:
MR SMYTH: … What about yourself? Will you meet Brumby and Greiner?
Mr Barr: Yes, I would certainly be happy to do that.
MR SMYTH: You will be happy to do it, but are you going to do it?
Mr Barr: Yes, I will do that, Mr Smyth.
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