Page 2273 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 5 June 2013
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This is the new era from this Chief Minister. But why should we be surprised? This minister has form. Remember she went to the 2004 election and said there will be no school closures. And we all know what happened after 2004—23 schools were closed in the territory. In 2008 what did she say before the election? “All my plans are on the table.” She forgot the small plan to purchase $77 million worth of Calvary hospital and at the same time sell the hospice. And, of course, in 2012, “All our policies are funded. There will be no job cuts.” They accused us of the job cuts they are now committing, and she said she would not triple the rates. But Mr Barr has let that little cat out of the bag by saying rates will go up 10 per cent a year. You only have to do that for about 11 years before your rates triple. And there is the dilemma—you cannot believe this government.
So what do we have tabled yesterday? It is a budget of debt. It is a budget of deficits. It is a budget of deceits. It is a budget that does not deliver. And that is the one thing that this government is consistently doing—under-delivering, whether it be reforms in the emergency department, whether it be reforms to ensure that waiting lists come down, whether it is a failure to budget for a surplus and deliver surpluses or whether it is a failure to keep their promises.
What is in this budget of weasel words and blank statements and light on detail? We have revenue increasing $250 million a year for the next four years. The Chief Minister spoke in the last debate about the hard times we have encountered. But those hard times have seen their budgeted revenue increase every year. So they are very interesting hard times in a budgetary sense when their revenue increases every year, according to the budget, and the actuals were even higher. They actually got more every budget from 2007-08 right through to the projection in this budget than they had actually budgeted for. I am sure that will happen in the 2013-14 budget as well because they get it wrong.
It is their addiction to spending that is the problem, not the revenue, because the revenue has not declined. Mr Barr talks about the hard times that he says causes his deficits. It is never his fault, have you ever noticed that? When something is good it is always Andrew Barr’s policy, but when it is wrong it is the GFC or the Tony Abbott effect or somebody or something else. But the stark reality is in the budget papers. They get more revenue every year and have so since 2007-08 and will do so for the next four years. When their budget goes up the revenue goes up about a quarter of a billion dollars a year.
It is never Andrew Barr’s fault. It was the GFC. Now it is Tony Abbott. Well, how about it being “our spending”? How about it being “our ability to deliver on capital works?” How about it being “funding our personal follies”? And how about it being the taxes that did not work, like the lease variation tax? I see they have finally revised that down in the outyears—finally. They are still clinging to the hope that $17 million will turn up this year, and we will see the outcome of that. But the tax has not delivered what was promised and, in fact, has had a very sad effect on urban renewal.
We had Mr Corbell with his sermon pontificating to us that we do not understand the importance of what they are doing. But he does not decry the fact that their taxes have
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