Page 2882 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 2013
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mentioned, that it is the Liberals that will cut jobs. Yet what we do see are jobs going and services cut, none of which was flagged. We see revenue going up 27 per cent in five years. We see the take from rates going up 16 per cent this year alone. It is going up 16 per cent, but we do not see a commensurate drop in conveyancing.
Land tax is up five per cent when the government is supposed to be getting rid of it. Car parking fees raise an extra 20 per cent. Traffic infringements collected are up 28 per cent. Parking fines are up seven per cent. Court fines are up 200 per cent. With a track record like this, no wonder the Treasurer wants us to debate this budget on hypothetical assumptions and faith alone.
Then we get to the presentation of the budget. The cost of living statement is not comparable to the one they provided last year. As we started this process of getting a reasonable cost of living statement, we accept that the thing will change. But it is quite incomparable to last year. Indeed, section 11(2) of the Financial Management Act actually says that the budget must be comparable year on year. So one has questions over that as well. When asked whether there will be a standard format for the cost of living report, Mr Barr of course said, “We may continue to evolve the statement.” Continue to evolve it, but perhaps you should maintain an ability to compare year on year. The question does arise: what is he hiding?
We had in last week’s debates some lovely quoting from the CIE report that helped back up the committee. Let me give you some of the other quotes that committee members forgot to read out or, of course, did not use because it did not suit their case. What CIE confirmed is this government’s 12-year failure to diversify the economy. CIE noted that:
Due to the impact of this sector—
That is the commonwealth government—
on other sectors and due to the lack of diversification in the ACT economy, this may also affect private sector hiring intentions.
That is on page 14. It states, “Due to the lack of diversification in the ACT economy.” Remember that the minister only found the word “diversify” last year. It appears in his economic plans. But we have not had much done to achieve those. I suspect that we will be a long time waiting.
In its plans to reach surplus the government cites 21 per cent of its savings initiatives to come out of procurement whole-of-government savings but with no information on the assumptions that underpin this initiative. Also, the failure to reach the savings targets amounts to what is an effective one-off delay in achieving the net operating surplus. Although the government talks about stimulating the economy with capital works, the capital works program for the forward estimates period in the 2013-14 budget is $990 million, 44 per cent less than in the 2012-13 budget.
The report goes on to say that the return to surplus is dependent on commonwealth government funding. Indeed, it states:
GST revenue represents approximately 24 per cent of the ACT’s revenue.
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