Page 86 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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The question is: has he done it? Has he gone and made a case on behalf of the ACT on perhaps the single most important source of funding that we have? I suspect the answer is no, he still has not done it. The problem is that when you look at the GST relativities in the 2011-12 year—remember that the 2011-12 year has just gone to a $181 million deficit—we get 1.15 times of what we contribute to the pool. But in 2011-12, when the deficit goes to $154 million, that drops to a factor of 1.11. But the following year when they expect us to believe we will be in surplus, it drops to 1.1. Then the year after that, 2013-14, it is 1.05, and so on it goes.
What we have is a declining return on our GST because this government does not do the work. What we have are surpluses that are illusionary in the outyears. They are just numbers in this document. But what we have is the cold, hard fact that yet again this government has blown the budget because the much-vaunted plan that has apparently served us well has now guaranteed another couple of record deficits.
That is a plan that I do not think anybody will be proud of. The problem for the people of the ACT is that there was no indication from the Treasurer in that speech that anything is going to change except, “Cross your fingers and hope that there is some sort of turn.” The minister said the plan has served us well. I think this is a minister and a Treasurer who is just being driven by the wind. He goes whatever direction the wind takes him because there is no plan here.
If your plan is to rely on property taxes and GST, this territory is in dreadful straits. You only need to look at the quarterly consolidated financials to see that general rates payments have gone down. They were meant to be $209 million. They are down to $207 million. Conveyancing has dropped $15 million. It was meant to be $127 million and it has dropped to $111 million. Conveyancing is declining and there are other taxes there that were meant to reap enormous dividends for this territory and they have failed. In fact, they may have cooked the goose. They may have killed the goose by stopping development because this government has made the cost of land in the territory unaffordable. In doing so, they are driving young Canberra families out of the market.
The party of inclusion has excluded an enormous number of people from the opportunity to own their own home. If you are looking at these numbers and you are looking for hope, you will not find it. This government has been negligent under this Treasurer and the former Treasurer throughout the course of this Assembly in the way that they have treated this budget—“We will simply continue to spend as we always do; we will cross our fingers.” What were they—guesstimates? They are just guesswork. Yes, that is what happens when you get guesswork. I suspect that in the outyears it is simply guesswork that we will return to surplus at all.
Madam Assistant Speaker, the budget is a very important guide to the health of the territory. Despite the pat words of the Treasurer, if you look at some of the items that truly affect the cost of living, you can see that people are suffering under this government and people’s cost of living, which rises constantly under this government, is not being addressed by this government. It is well and good to stand here and say it is the Greeks, it is Europe, it is the federal parliament, it is Tony Abbott—it is everybody but this government. You would wonder what this government is here for.
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