Page 90 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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I also think that there does need to be greater attention paid to the processes that go on in getting that land ready. There seems to be a little bit of tripping over various different areas of directorates and so forth—the previous LDA with ACTPLA and so on. We do need to get those processes right. We need to streamline them so that we do not double up or, as happens in many cases, those processes are done in the wrong order, which again takes time. So that area of land release certainly does need to be looked at because it is not just about the land and the houses; it is obviously about the impact on the ACT budget.
When we knew that the territory was going into very difficult economic times and that things were going to be tight, the then Treasurer put out a budget plan. That budget plan put the territory’s budget back into balance in 2013-14 and we are still tracking along. Of course this is concerning; I am sure that many of us would have preferred to have seen very different numbers coming out today. But, as I said, things are interconnected. We know that we are getting less GST revenue, and we are heavily reliant on it. People are spending less across Australia; they are getting rid of household debt. Less money spent out there means less money collected, which means less money to divide between the states and territories.
We are going to have to tackle this, because it is not something that is a one-off; this is going to be an ongoing challenge that the ACT is going to face, and that is why we need to get on with the results of the tax review. This was undertaken by Ted Quinlan. My understanding is that it has been finished and it has been delivered, but we have yet to see the results of that work. It is important that we see that and we start having the debates we need to have.
I was surprised that Mr Smyth went for so long in his speech before he got to diversifying the economy, which was right at the end. For a moment there I thought we were going to get away with a speech from Mr Smyth without him mentioning those words. But, no, he did. I would love to hear Mr Smyth’s thoughts on diversifying the economy. We do have to look into the future around how we are going to deal with the fact that we cannot just rely so heavily on the commonwealth and at what the options are. That is why the tax review is going to be so important to that debate.
Of course the other thing is to be looking at other industries, other sectors, that we might be engaging with, supporting to grow, that will put us ahead when we are facing the sorts of challenges we know are coming in the future—the challenges around climate change, the challenges around peak oil. A clean economy strategy is something that the Greens are very keen on. We have pushed the government on it and they have responded by doing work. We hope to see something significant result from that in April of this year. I think that is around the timing that we are expecting. These things will be part of an important conversation about how we are going to tackle these sorts of issues into the future.
It is not a great day. These are not the sorts of numbers that you really want to be going out and sharing with the Canberra public. But we do need to be taking a calm approach to all of this, a longer term approach to all of this. The other way is just to
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