Page 2274 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 5 June 2013
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destroyed urban renewal. We have got Mr Rattenbury who says, “We want urban renewal and greater density so that we have got passengers for the light rail, but I have got a 15-storey tower so I will knock it down to a 12.” Okay, times two, there are six storeys that will have to be put somewhere else. So you have all these contradictions from those opposite. You have the platitudes, but what they need is a dose of reality, because it is a dose of reality that the taxpayer got from this budget.
Total government revenue increases $250 million per year over the forward estimates. A billion dollars. The budget goes from $4 billion to $5 billion in just four years. Taxation revenue has increased by 25 per cent over the same period. Rates collection is up 16 per cent this year and 36 per cent in the forward estimates. Residential rates are up 10 per cent or $139 per annum on average with a 13 per cent increase in the fixed charge for rates. The government cannot say that that does not affect all households.
Commercial rates are up 26 per cent or $3,388 per annum, with a 44 per cent increase on the fixed charge hitting all commercial properties, big and small. This will directly affect business. Payroll tax collection is up 24 per cent over the forward estimates. The fire and emergency services levy collection is up 30 per cent over the estimates. Traffic infringement revenue is up 31 per cent from the current year to the end of the forward estimates. Revenue from parking is up 12 per cent over the forward estimates, yet there is no provision to upgrade parking machines.
We have expenditure on capital works. Revenue goes up by a billion dollars, but expenditure continues to outstrip revenue. And there is your problem. This government simply cannot control their spending. At the same time, they do not deliver the outcomes they promised. They never have, they never will. There is expenditure on various feasibility studies and design work for infrastructure programs but no major infrastructure programs are actually being started. And this is after the Treasurer beats the drum for four years, “Tony Abbott’s coming. It’s going to be terrible. Woe is us. I’m putting money aside for a rainy day.” But there is nothing to run. That is all at a time when his federal colleagues, who he has never once condemned, are cutting the federal public service. The cuts are happening now, Mr Barr, and you have done nothing to stop them.
The budget paper states that there are total savings of $142 million, but there is absolutely no detail on how these savings will come about, where they are coming from and how much is being taken from each directorate. At least the budget last year had that detail. But here is the new era of accountability under the Chief Minister where even that detail is denied to people. The government either knows where this money is coming from or is simply hoping to raise $142 million. But to reduce the savings chapter in the budget to just over a page is to be contemptuous of this place, and it belies the fact that we have got a new era of openness and accountability.
Then, of course, we are looking for more savings. The government is going to spend $1.7 million looking for cuts in parks and city services, ACTION, the Emergency Services Agency and Corrective Services, all of which, of course, blew their budgets and all of which are getting what is called in the budget papers operational support. You can simply say that is code for, “We didn’t manage our budgets,” which so often happens with these departments under this government.
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