Page 1876 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 June 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
But if you are going to complain about the job cuts that are in the federal budget this year, it is a bit late. That avalanche started last year and those opposite were all mute. They all had a chance in budget debates to decry the cuts of the Gillard-Rudd years, and did nothing about it. As a consequence 14,473 jobs were slashed under Labor. If this government had paid attention or taken note last year, they could have started to genuinely get the ACT budget in shape to cope with that downturn. They would have genuinely increased the rate of diversification of the ACT economy, and they would have genuinely prepared capital works projects that were budget-ready to put out immediately, to take up some of the slack that will occur in the economy. But they did nothing.
They were quiet. They were mute. They went quietly into the night because they did not want to attack their Labor colleagues. As a consequence, they have let down the people of the ACT and they have let down all those who treasure this place as their home.
The ACT Treasurer characterised his budget on Tuesday as “a budget that values Canberrans”. He tells us that he is borrowing for productive infrastructure, and he used the analogy of the territory’s debt as simply a mortgage, and that the government is not borrowing to pay the electricity or food bills. “Prudent borrowings,” he tells us. “These are creating jobs.”
He has defended his decisions by saying, “Would I run any size deficit? No.” Rhetorical phraseology like this is all relative. The tenor of this budget might be subdued, but the message, as pointed out so ably by the Leader of the Opposition, is still the same—spend, spend, spend, borrow, borrow, borrow, debt, debt, debt.
The Treasurer promised that he would deliver a typical Labor budget, and he has. And what he has not told us is how they will get us out of these problems. There will be a forecast operating loss of $333 million, with net borrowing requirements of $862 million. Just the capital works budget is telling. It has increased by 97 per cent, from $1.27 billion to $2.5 billion, including $1.3 billion in capital provisions.
The Treasurer talks of strategic infrastructure into the future, yet 92 per cent of the new works will occur between 2014 and 2016. And even when you factor in the government’s projects under this capital provision plan, over 55 per cent of the capital spending is in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 allocations.
Madam Assistant Speaker, when you look at the budget papers, the government’s new additional GGS borrowings in 2014-15 are expected to be $505 million, a 28 per cent increase from the previous budget. Net debt has increased by approximately 133 per cent from 2013-14, from $527 million to $1.2 billion. And it grows. It continues to grow over the forward years, in fact, by approximately another 47 per cent.
Given this government’s inglorious track record with infrastructure delivery, I do not believe that we will see in the coming years the UC public hospital, capital metro, city to the lake, the Australia forum or any of this government’s legacy projects realised within this time frame, because they are not shovel-ready. This is not a government
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video