Page 3088 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
On the other hand, unencumbered cash holdings are significantly diminished. This could be a potential concern insofar as it is well recognised in the academic literature on finance that unencumbered cash can be an important risk management tool for investment portfolio managers.
What have we done? We have run it down to virtually zero. We have given away one of those tools because of the poor economic management of this government.
It is interesting that there is a section then on the management of infrastructure projects across the ACT. Recommendation 5 is that the ACT government review the process by which capital works projects are scoped as a means of minimising infrastructure project rollovers and delays in completing infrastructure projects. There are enormous rollovers in this year’s budget. The government always boasts of how much it is going to attempt to spend. What it does not clearly outline is how much it fails to spend and deliver and the blow-outs both in time and in budget. The committee makes a recommendation there.
Of course, one of the key aspects of the budget is tax reform. It is interesting that the committee does not actually make a recommendation on tax reform; it is mute. There is no “yes, this is good; this is bad; this is whatever”. We tried to put in some recommendations—I will go to that when I get to the dissenting report—but the committee is mute on Mr Barr’s tax reform. I think Mr Hargreaves got it in one when he said that you cannot count. That is how the Labor Party thinks of the Greens; they are just Labor votes incognito. He had the numbers. Instead of having a real look at the budget, what Mr Hargreaves reveals is the government’s attitude that they will get their budget however they want.
There is a recommendation on the cost of living. It is interesting, again, that in the report that Mr Hargreaves referred to from the economic adviser it says:
We recommend that future Cost of Living Statements could consider more integrated worked examples using the median household income (including only all the concessions that such households would be eligible for) as well as a separate worked example for a representative lower income household that qualifies for the concessions it features.
The report actually says in recommendation 6:
The Committee recommends that section 11(1)(f) of the Financial Management Act 1996 (ACT) be amended to ensure that Cost of Living Statements take into account all matters in the Budget that will affect the cost of living for people living in the ACT.
That, of course, is in light of the fact that the government have sought to minimise the effectiveness of my amendment to the Financial Management Act by minimising what they have taken into account that shows the true cost to ordinary Canberrans of this government in their budget.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video