Page 1719 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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asked to take the greatest share of the heavy lifting, as it is described by those opposite.
It is concerning that we now have this approach to our national politics whereby picking on the most vulnerable in society—be they young people, pensioners or those in receipt of some form of government allowance—is now a new national sport for the conservative side of politics, for the Institute of Public Affairs and their fellow travellers, who deem that these people are the ones who should be targeted for significant pain and to have a significant withdrawal of support for them—all sacrificed on the altar of some sort of fiscal purity, particularly in the next couple of years.
So it is timely for the ACT to be able to deliver an entirely different approach in its budget, to ensure that we are making the investments in health and education, and in community services in particular, to ensure that we are offering a helping hand to those most in need, and that we are ensuring that service provision for those people who need it the most will be there.
When we received the hospital pass from the federal Treasurer and the Prime Minister, particularly on health spending, we were faced with two choices—either to significantly cut expenditure in health or to seek to maintain our effort to support the health and wellbeing of our community and wear that on the budget bottom line. We have chosen to do that this year. As the Chief Minister said, you simply cannot turn on and off health services like a tap. We are obviously being asked to undertake significant burden sharing by the commonwealth. It is not so much sharing here; the entire problem is now in the hands of the states and territories.
It is interesting to note the unanimity of voice from state and territory governments, regardless of whether they are Labor or Liberal. There is certainly a consensus across the states and territories that what occurred three weeks ago was not only a breach of a fundamental commitment that was made prior to the federal election but also it would hurt the most vulnerable and would put undue pressure on states and territories in the delivery of services.
That is why we have adopted an entirely different approach in the delivery of our budget. As a number of organisations have rightly observed, the budget announcements in maintaining current health services, along with the additional spending on clinical and community services, were in fact most welcome. It is a budget that very rightly put the welfare of the ACT community’s most vulnerable first. Given the difficult economic environment imposed on the ACT government by the federal government, we made a very sensible decision in this budget to maintain health spending, and that should be recognised and acknowledged.
I think we are seeing that across the community services sector, from those as diverse as Medicare Local, ACTCOSS and ACT Shelter, amongst others, who have certainly made very supportive comments about the government’s decisions with regard to community services.
As my colleague Ms Berry mentioned, last week we launched the human services blueprint in west Belconnen, with a particular focus on connected service delivery, as
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